The Loneliness and the Scream
by QuixoticCellist
Summary: Immediately following the finale. How does it all work now? What happens next?
1. Steal Back

_If you're wondering what's for real,  
if you're willing to make a deal-  
Tell me how am I gonna steal back your heart?_

"What is she doing here?" Sarah ground her teeth angrily. She was spitting fire and snorting fumes and I could see the very fear and fire bristle her shoulders and spine. I thought of a tiger in the zoo my grandfather took me to when I was a child, and the keepers took its child one day to trade to another zoo. And she paced along the bars, ears pierced back to her skull, mouth open, cheeks puffing and teeth jutting out in snarls every few steps. She would pace until she couldn't move. I remembered her head, low and searching the crowd, as if one of us would offer up her cub like a joke. I sat for hours watching her.

"Easy," Felix urged. He didn't say anything else, but put his hand on her forearm with his back to everyone in the small, trashed living room. I shifted slightly at her anger. I shifted slightly at my own unease at the question, because it was valid, and because I was wondering it myself. But that didn't make my fingers unclasp from her hand, nor did it negate my resolve entirely. It made me internally aware of how close I'd come.

"I-" she locked her jaw. She glared at me. "I will-" she stopped herself. There was the snarl. "If you know-" she stopped again, choking slightly. The curl of her lip surprised me and genuinely scared me, I'm not ashamed to say. I couldn't even properly sympathize because I couldn't imagine what she was going through.

"She's on our side," Cosima stepped in front of me. She let go of my hand and did not touch me, so much as just stand there between us both. "She is, Sarah," she assured her. I wanted to nod, but I couldn't and didn't think it proper. "She didn't tell them about Kira and she could have."

"She just told them about all of us!" Alison echoed in the corner, leaning against the railing of the stairs.

"And what about Donnie, huh?" Cosima turned to Alison now, putting herself between me and another of her sisters. "And you signed the contract!"

I understood the concept of a clone. It was easy to conceive. But to see it. To see three identical Cosimas standing there, the same in every way but different as could be. They were identical in genetics, yet had adapted the relationships of sisters, almost without realizing it. It all still made my head turn and feel wobbly a bit. To see her face contorted in anger at me nearly broke my heart, reminding me of how it looked when I walked out of her apartment. That felt like weeks ago. But it was the mother who hated me now, and who wanted to kill me for her daughter. It was simply haunting.

"I'll deal with it," Alison flicked her wrist dismissively. "Don't worry about that. We'll figure something out."

"Like hell," Cosima muttered, shaking her head. "We just need to think. We need to be smarter."

I stayed quiet throughout. I wanted to ask what about Cosima and what about her illness, but these problems were in the moment. A child was taken. A body was legally given up and claimed. The illness was all that mattered to me though. I could fix that. I could try. I had to fix it.

"You have to go back, to talk to Leeki," Sarah looked at me again. Felix kicked around some papers. I heard Alison milling about when I turned back to Sarah.

"There is nothing-" I looked helplessly at the mess. "I haven't spoken to him in days."

"She's out of the game," Cosima explained. She was leaning against the door jamb now. Her fingers gripped the moulding. She couldn't look at me. "She picked sides." I wanted to scream for her to look at me, but this still wasn't time, and definitely wasn't the place.

"No one is out of the game," Alison reminded us. "Not us," she pointed to her sisters. "We're never out, and neither is anyone associated with us."

"I don't think Leeki has Kira," Felix muttered. He was staring at a photo Sarah handed him. "Mrs. S. She has her."

"I don't understand," Sarah sat on the couch. "I don't understand any of it and I'm sick of fucking feeling this way."

"She's an anomaly," Cosima explained again. "Maybe Mrs. S knows that. She could be protecting her."

"She got you away from it all," Alison joined. I wanted to sit, or to move to a wall, but I was frozen, both intrusive and unwanted at the same time.

"She's had Kira this whole time," Felix tried to assure her. "She wouldn't hurt her."

"We should leave this place," I offered, looking about nervously. "They will look here first."

"You would know, eh?" Sarah popped up again. "You going to tell them where we are? Huh?" She stared at me hard, challengingly. I shook my head and tried to maintain her gaze.

"She's right," Alison took a step forward this time, though not as protectively as Cosima. "We're sitting ducks here. Who knows if a neighbor called in a disturbance. Your cop friends are itching to get over here, I'm sure."

"We can't..." Sarah looked around helplessly. She looked at Felix. She looked at Cosima. She wanted someone to allow her to wait until her daughter came back, because this was her home and this was the last place she'd been seen.

"We'll call Paul from mine," her brother offered assuringly.

"You drive," Cosima answered. She was all authority now, logical and rational and capable of saving them all. "We will walk," she didn't look at me, but referenced my existence. "Can you be over first thing in the morning?" she looked at Alison now, who nodded. "We need to plan. We need to figure out how to persevere."

"We need to get Kira," Sarah reminded her. Cosima nodded.

"We need to regroup," Cosima decided. "Clone club meeting in the morning."

"And Helena?" Alison opened her mouth in the quiet of the last few seconds. Sarah just shook her head. "Okay, good," she decided. "Tomorrow then." She hugged Cosima tightly. They lingered for support. Slowly, as if approaching the tiger at the zoo, she hugged Sarah as well. Sarah struggled slightly, then allowed it. "We've got this," she whispered, holding her sisters cheeks. "Huh? You know? We will find her. It's all of us, now."

"We're like the Musketeers," Cosima offered to lighten the situation.

"Then how come I'm the one getting fucked?" Sarah pulled away a bit. "I tried to turn a trick, and look at what I get into!" she was exasperated. "My daughter..." she sobbed dryly. "And you lot..."

"It's alright," Felix stepped in. "Let me drive." There were sirens in the distance. "We have to go. We have to talk to Paul."

They disappeared through the back. Cosima hugged Alison again. She glared at me on my way out.

In the quiet of the disheveled living room, my bones ached under the avoidance of Cosima's eyes. My voice caught in the cavity behind my tongue, it shrank in my throat. I watched her look about for a moment while the sound of cars starting dulled and eventually tires departed and dwindled down the street. I was suddenly very aware of how I had gotten there, while at the same time, I couldn't understand it at all.

I'd been assigned to protect a project. That was all. And then she kissed me, and she spoke my language, the one that mattered, the one that was my own that no one else could hear. She wouldn't look at me now, but I knew she could speak it. Her hands were in her pockets as she looked about a bit more, giving them time, perhaps thinking about everything she'd gotten into and how she ended up there as well. But I'd kissed her back. That wasn't part of the project. Finding the names was. But at the same time that made her more real, it made her more rare. It made her more fragile because to harm them, to protect her, would hurt her in the end. She confused my brain. She ruined my heart. I was suddenly and for the first time, completely wrapped up in the fate of another as if it were my own, and there was nothing else I could do about it. Because she kissed me. And she was... her.

"We should go, ma chérie," I started. The sirens had stopped, but being here made me nervous.

"Don't call me that," she dropped her head. "You do not have the right to call me that." There was an anger still there in her. Despite just an hour ago, on the couch, when she told me she was sick in a dying way, now she was reminded of my failures to her. I hurt her because I walked away and because I stayed.

"But you are," I offered weakly. "You are dear, to me." That was all I had. It was pathetic. There were more reasons. There was the fact that my chest ached when I was not in the same room as her. There was the idea that her eyes were the most wonderful things I'd ever seen. And there was the inexplainable aspect of it all, how unlikely it was. But she felt right. I couldn't even define it in my own language, let alone English.

"I thought so," she shook her head. She had wounded eyes.

"You are, and you know you are," I finally moved towards her. "Cosima," I stood near her, as near as I would dare. "I am on your side, you said it yourself. You can trust me. You do trust me. I know that you do."

"I don't know if I want to," she looked at me finally. Her eyes were glassy and swimming in her glasses.

"I don't care," I assured her. "You can't do this alone, and there is no where else I can be." She tried to make herself stern. She tried to make herself fierce. She was. That was not the problem. Maybe she was too fierce, and these moments I was allowed to see scared her. "You and me, ma petite," I promised. I let my hands swallow her cheeks. I held her preciously. I held her delicately. "Tu es mon coeur." Her forehead was on my forehead. "You and me."

I closed my eyes and breathed her in. I felt her hands on the lapel of my coat. She smelled like vanilla and a deep weediness hidden beneath it. I kissed her forehead. I held myself there with my eyes closed, willing her to believe me. For now I was just comfort. The trust part would come later. Hopefully.

"You're on my team," she affirmed for herself. I nodded.

"Bien sûr," I whispered. I felt her body closer to my own.

"Once you're on the team, you're on the team," she insisted. "On _their_ team too," she nodded her head towards the door. "And not on Leeki's team, and not on neolution's team, and not on anyone else's team. This is it."

"I know," I kissed her forehead again. It was all I could do.

"I'm scared, Delphine," she whispered. "We're in over our heads."

"We are," I agreed. "I am scared too." That was the truth. She got the truth now.

"I'm sick," she looked at me again. I felt my personhood in that glance.

"Leave that to me," I gave her a small smile to alleviate her worry. "I know some things about immunology."

I felt her take a deep breath. Her hands wound their way inside my coat and around my waist. I hugged her to me quickly, strongly, protectively, soothingly. I wasn't convinced she trusted me. I was convinced that she was mine. I was convinced that I was hers. I was certain that I would do anything it took from now on for her. I had done everything for her. I'd given up an entire career and life, essentially. I didn't know who I was anymore without her. But to have all of that wrapped up in another. It is fear personified. It is insanity.

"We should go," she decided after a moment. It was all passed her now. The momentary uncertainty, the overwhelming fear. It was stifled again.

We walked through the chilly city quietly. For a few minutes, we were a normal couple. We were on a date, and walking home. There was even the uncertainty that we were a couple that nagged at my mind tirelessly. The night glittered and the dew of the cold and the sighs of the people on the street. Her arm tucked itself into my own. Her sisters were probably at their destinations. Sarah was probably a wreck. Alison was probably anxious. Maybe even murdering her husband as we strolled along, innocent and quiet and ourselves. Something we'd never been able to be yet and probably wouldn't be for a long while, if ever.

"I will take you, one day, to Paris," I suddenly was taken by the thought.

"To meet mamá and papá?" she teased slightly. I hadn't thought of that part.

"Of course," I grinned. She squeezed me tighter. "We will stroll the Champs-Élysées after I get you a bit too topsy on wine. And I will wear an expensive dress we pick out from the shop on Rue Rivoli, and you will wear one we find at the Palais Royale. And we will walk until adventure finds us."

"Tipsy on french wine," she murmured dreamily. I looked at passerby's, both nervous that each would be someone to grab us, but at the same time, contented in the moment. Nothing could ruin this.

"Oui," I nodded. "And we will look at the lights," I pointed to the trees on the sidewalk, constructing with my finger. "And the air there," I kissed the sky. "It is unlike another."

"That is because you've never been in San Fran on an April night," she chided me. "I will take you to the chocolate factory for a hot chocolate, and look over the bay. It stings your lungs in the best ways," she assured me.

"Now I am meeting your mamá and papá?" I laughed slightly. There were some nerves in that. More than meeting my own. Perhaps because mine felt further from the truth.

"Who knows?" she sighed. "Thinking of kissing you with the bridge in the background won't hurt."

"Oui," I nodded, watching our feet in step. "Until then," I sighed. We had this moment, until then. We had this walk across a foreign town to us both on a night filled with misery and bitterness and fear. We had this moment in it all. We had future moments.

We continued to stroll. Nothing we did within the next few hours would find Kira. Nothing we did would fix anything. So we strolled to Felix's. I dreamed of showing her my home. I dreamed of taking her to my flat in Paris. I was well over my head with the dreaming, as I was new to it and never done it before, but it came so naturally. Perhaps it was the fear fueling it. The unanswerable that she would not survive. The fear that these were unattainable dreams. That made them easier to feel and desire.

But we continued putting one foot in front of the other. I felt a growing sickness in my stomach, the kind that comes when you become more and more aware of the choices you've made and what they may mean. I had the same feeling when Leeki asked me to help. But I pushed it aside because it was my job, and that was a sense of duty. And this was a sense of duty, too. This was my honor and heart at stake. Perhaps it was the flight and the lag and the entirety of my emotions over the past few days.

"I am property," Cosima started. I felt stupid for even having feelings at the moment. "I am genetically crafted intellectual property."

"Non," I scolded her slightly. "You are not just a barcode and genetic theory," I swore vehemently.

"I am everything I've wanted to study," she continued. We turned towards Felix's apartment. I hadn't even thought to get a hotel on my way there. I'd only thought of her. "There were so many of us. The enormity of it. It is baffling. And I'm just now realizing that I am... I'm not even real."

"You are flesh and bone and real," I promised again. "You are only mine, and no one else's." She smiled slightly at this. "And that makes you as real as anyone else."

"There is one of you," she argued. We paused in the street.

"We cannot be sure," I joked. I gave her a smile. "I could tell you from your sisters blindfolded. That is how I know that you are unique, and you are you, and you are real, and you are magnificent, ma chérie."

"You could tell?" she chuckled a bit. "I doubt it."

"I could," I promised grandly. Perhaps it was a mistake on my part. "You have this blush," I ran my hand along her collarbone. "I could feel it." I leaned towards her and nearly kissed her cheek. "And I could smell you," I whispered. "You smell like Cosima." I heard her gulp. "I could tell. You are not the same."

"You are too French for your own good sometimes," she sighed, looking up at the windows of the lit apartment. I chuckled slightly and pulled away.

"Just," I paused. "Please know that things will be alright, and you are mine, and you are special. Please."

"You make me nervous," she revealed. There was more truth in that. It was a nervousness that trespassed simple lust or attraction. It was acknowledging that someone else could kill you in every way imaginable.

"Tu me fais nerveux," I promised her. "We will figure it out in the morning."

Cosima nodded and I followed her inside. I wanted to kiss her but it felt too intimate in the moment, and perhaps I was not allowed just yet. Perhaps I hadn't earned it. Perhaps she didn't trust me and wouldn't. Perhaps I was a crutch for the moment. There were many perhaps in my brain at the moment and they ruined me. But I swallowed it and locked it away and waited for time to tell because I was there, and I would be for her.

I followed her despite my nerves, because what no one tells you is that nervousness does not deter or warn or save. It just makes you realize things you wouldn't like to about yourself and another and the relationship to them.

Sarah was asleep when we closed the door behind us and Felix hushed us.

"It bloody well took you two long enough," he hissed in a whisper.

"How is she, Fe?" Cosima asked, hanging her coat on the chair with my own. She sounded like her own sister so much in the moment, I wondered about the veracity of my own statement before about knowing her blindfolded. "What did Paul say?"

"She's a fucking wreck," he shook his head. "I drugged her pretty hard."

"Willingly?" I asked, oddly concerned. He shrugged.

"She needed to rest," he offered as his only defense. "Paul was working on it when we talked to him. But for now there's nothing we can do, honestly."

"Fuck," Cosima plopped on the couch. She rung her cheeks in her hands. She looked tired. She looked mentally and physically drained beyond recognition. "Just fuck," she held herself up now.

"Yeah," Felix agreed. "Do you suppose we're safe here?" he looked about his own apartment.

"They do not know about you," I offered. "This is the safest place in the city."

"Well there's that," he nodded to himself and set his mug on the counter. "There's a sheet on the couch. Make yourselves at home," he shrugged. "I'm going to bed."

"Thank you," Cosima hugged him tightly. "Thank you so much. Don't worry, okay?"

I sat on the couch while they said goodnight and talked in hushed and rushed words. Our papers and laptops mingled in a mess of fabricated thoughts and the unknowable exhaustion. Slowly I straightened the documents and folders. Something in there was valuable. Something was important and we needed to find it.

"Felix is worried about Sarah," Cosima joined me, surveying the table.

"Naturellement," I agreed, shoving papers in the final folder and stacking it with the rest.

"What do we do?" She continued to stand across from me. There wasn't the normal nervous energy there. There was instead a helplessness that I could only feel as well.

"What do we do about you?" I asked the more pressing question. "You're sick," I reminded her. She shook her head dismissively. "I mean it," I tried a bit more sternly, though quiet so the sleeping pair in the bedroom wouldn't hear.

"I don't know where to start," she sighed. "Kira... she's just a little girl."

"She will be found," I promised. I scooted to allow her room on the couch.

I watched her turn off the light beside the couch and only felt her sit beside me in the dark. I kicked off my shoes as she did her own. Sluggishly she laid down. I followed suit because there was nothing else I could do, no where else I could go.

"It's all fucked, Delphine," she whispered. I pinned her between my body and the couch, pulling the sheet over her. Like a child I believed it would keep the monsters away. "I never thought it would end up like this. Helena was Sarah's twin. Her actual twin from the womb."

"Mon Dieu," I gasped quietly. "That... that makes things..."

"And now there are only four of us left," she observed, ignoring my surprise. "Four. That we know of. And it doesn't matter that Helena is out of the picture, because we're genetically predisposition to hack our lungs out anyway."

"You are getting lost in the melancholy," I silenced her. "You don't do that. You stole wine and you smile quite big." I let my arms wrap and snake behind her back and up to her shoulders, holding her like a car seat, clutching her like a life vest. "We will find Kira," I promised again. "We will figure it out. Do not lose faith in that, amour."

"I know," she tried to persuade me to thinking she believed it. "I know," she took a deep breath and pressed into my chest. Her fingers dug themselves into my hair and stayed still there, only occasionally moving to assure herself I was there. "It's chaotic," she half chuckled and half sighed. That was the perfect balance.

"It could be worse," I reminded her.

"How?"

"You could be here, alone and cold," I squeezed a bit. I played with the cusp of her shoulder blade. I traced it's outline with just the tips of my fingers. "I could not know where you were or what has happened to you."

"There's that," she nodded.

I closed my eyes again and held her there, tucked into the back of the couch and my arms. It was not supposed to be like this. But it was, and I had this moment, too. I was plotting an archive of moments to have if things did get worse. I would have these. She moved her hand a bit, dragging her fingers through my hair and just below against the skin of my neck. It lulled me. But I fought against their calming powers as best I could.

"Tell me how we get out of this," she shifted. I felt her lips on my sternum. One long, soft kiss, there.

"I do not know," I opened my eyes and stared at the street lights projected on the wall. "But I can tell you about what happens when we do."

"Clearly I'm the brains of this outfit then," she chuckled. There she was. I knew she was there, underneath it all.

"You didn't think I just liked your beautiful smile, or les yeux, ou le nez, ou les oreilles, ou les épaules, or hands, or elbows," I kept listing. "Or this," I let a finger drag along the skin that connected neck to shoulder. "I do not know what it is called, but I like it."

"Oh, so you just like me for my body, at first, at least?" she teased a bit, tiredly and halfheartedly. It was a performance. I continued it.

"Non," I reminded her. "It was that brain. The rest is, how you say, bonus."

Her leg rested over my own. I couldn't imagine being closer to another human than I was to her in that moment.

"Tell me about after, again," she murmured. She was fighting sleep as well.

"I already told you about Paris," I somewhat scolded. "There is nothing beside Paris."

"Tell me anything," she adjusted her head and yawned.

"I will make you breakfast, one morning," I decided, closing my eyes while her tired and clumsy fingers traced the nape of my neck. "The sun will already be up, but it will be winter, you know, the snow out there, the wind chilly. And it will be cold in your apartment as well, because it is winter. But the winter sun. I love it."

"Mhmmm," she murmured again.

"I will cut you fruit. Do you like strawberries, ma petite?" I asked, earning a slight nod. "And bananas?" another. "And blueberries?" A shake this time. Subtle, but there. "I can see you tangled in sheets from the kitchen. I can make you that terrible excuse for café." She grunted. "And your apartment will be clean. No folders or briefcases of blood and DNA samples. Nothing genetic. Just our empty wine glasses from the night before, oui?" There was no movement. I felt the skin on her spine now and her even breaths. "And I will see your legs, caught in the sheets. And you will be sleepy and have that morning smile. It is the same as your easy smile. The one you first gave me." I tucked her forehead under my chin and took a deep breath. "And I will kiss you like you've never been kissed. Comme je n'ai jamais embrassé avant."

She slept, safe and sound and warm and quiet, right beside me, wrapped around me, entwined with me. And I was suddenly nightmarishlyI was aware that I'd never been in love before, and this crash course could be the death of me.


	2. Still

_Still with feet touching_  
_Still with eyes meeting_  
_Still our hands match_  
_Still with hearts beating._

"I haven't heard from her either," I sighed, furrowing and focusing on the task at hand.

"We should have gone with her," Alison worried from my computer screen. I scrunched up my face and coughed slightly while neatly and precisely tucking the end of the flimsy white paper into the other and rolling. "Do you have to do that now?" she worried still. She sipped from her glass of wine then went back to cleaning her gun.

"Were we supposed to all travel together? That wouldn't cause a stir or anything," I reminded her. "Relax, Al," I looked up finally. "She will get back to us." Beth's death had been difficult on Alison. It'd been difficult all around, but she was her friend or something. Very suddenly we were past that and a family. The past month had ruined our entire lives in ways.

"I can't stand just sitting here, waiting," she shuddered a bit with a pause. "It feels like we should be doing something. It feels like someone is about to appear and take me away. It feels like we're sitting on a pressure switch, you know?"

"You have to relax," I tried to calm her. "Seriously, Al, calm down. They've known where we were the entire time. If they wanted us, they'd take us. But it'd ruin the experiment."

"I hate when you call my life an experiment," she reminded me quickly.

"I'm not," I took a deep breath. "It's just... we are valuable, and more valuable the longer we live our lives completely normally."

"What happens when it's more valuable to dissect us?" she picked up her wine glass again and cocked her eyebrow over it while looking at me seriously.

"You need to go to bed, or something." That was all I could think of to dispel the thoughts. For her, perhaps it was more real. She signed a contract. She had an appointment after the New Year. She worried about Sarah. She worried about her children. She worried about Kira. She worried about me.

"I can't sleep, much," she sighed. I stopped licking the paper and watched her rest her head on her hand. She stared at me, but I wasn't sure she was seeing me. "What are you doing up anyway? You have class in the morning."

"Trying to wait up for Delphine. I haven't seen her for more than passing in a few days," I ventured, returning to my mission so I didn't have to see her dirty glance. "I know... I know...But you need to trust me, now. Even if you don't trust her. She's working hard, for all of us."

"I get it, Cos," she sighed instead of lecturing. "We all need someone to help us make sense of this... situation."

"This isn't a situation," I smiled at her. "It's just our life. You and me and Sarah, we're family. Our adventures just get a little out of control sometimes."

"Yeah," she murmured, returning to her gun. "Something like that."

"Have you heard anything from Leeki?" I asked, moving to the bench by the window. She shook her head. "What about Donnie?" Another shake, this time with a bit of a smirk. "Well, shooting someone's testicles tends to have that effect, I suppose."

"Like you wouldn't have done the same," she shrugged. I chuckled slightly and shook my head.

I made myself comfortable, propping the spare pillows behind me. I tucked my wool sock-clad feet into the cushion to keep warm against the autumn that had decided to settle upon my city with stray flurries and colder than normal weather. Alison's face rested on my knees while I searched for a lighter.

"Have you thought any more about Christmas?" She asked after a few moments of silence. Our nightly chats had grown familiar since I'd returned to Minneapolis. Nearly nightly, and at least daily, we spoke, reminding the other that we were real, and the other was not alone and safe and alive. Mostly it was short, sometimes it dragged on because neither of us wanted to do anything else. Together we worried about Sarah. Alison did as much research as she could on her end. I tried to explain mine to her, leaving out Delphine's work as best I could. She didn't need another thing to worry about yet.

"I haven't," I sighed, propping the window and burrowing against the cold. I wasn't supposed to smoke anymore. I wasn't supposed to agitate my lungs at all. I was treated like a child at times. That was worse than the coughing fits.

"Well think about it," she reminded me. "And Delphine too." I could see the pains she went through to say that.

"I was thinking of going home," I shrugged, bringing the joint to my lips.

"Oh!" she looked up inquisitively. "Oh, that could be nice." I nodded and took a ferocious breath. I wanted to tell her that it could be the last time, and I owed it to the people who raised me to see them again, at least once. Show them they did good. Tell them not to worry. See what information I could dig up from the papers in the attic. "With Delphine?"

"I was thinking about it, yeah," I nodded, blowing out the window.

"You are smitten," she observed. There was a playful smile now, and she took another sip. I wondered at what point we became friends. "It's nerve-racking to take someone home."

"Yeah, thanks for that," I sighed sarcastically.

"You haven't before, have you?" she asked, eyes widening with excitement. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "Oh my goodness," she chuckled. "This must be serious, then."

"I think so," I nodded still. That was news to me. But Delphine had been right. I felt it too.

"My offer still stands," she reminded me in my moment of introspection.

"How about no matter what, we have a New Years together?" I thought suddenly. "You know, ring in a new year in style, set it right for the year to come. Kira will be home by then," I said that for myself as much as her, and more for Sarah, even if she didn't know. It was a prayer in that sense. "We can all relax and enjoy the holiday season."

"Yeah, yeah," she nodded. "That could work." I took another puff. "You know," she started to talk, but I didn't hear much more. I caught a familiarly frazzled state of impeccable hair on the corner across the street. "I will probably just get," Alison continued. I snuffed my joint on the window sill and flicked it to the bush a few stories below. But Delphine did not come closer. Instead she paced, reached the corner, turned around, came to the corner again.

"I have to go, Al," I interrupted whatever she was saying. "Delphine is home."

"Okay," she offered. "Call me tomorrow."

"Yes, mom," I returned, giving her a smile before closing my computer. I placed it at the other end of the bench and watched a bit more. Maybe it was voyeuristic. I smiled and shut the window. I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for presents.

I watched her light a cigarette, or what I expected to be one, as the end burned red and illuminated her face at first strike, though not enough for me to make it out completely. Her coat was turned up tightly around her ears to protect against the cold. She crossed her arms. She paced. She blew smoke up into the air before throwing the butt on the ground and grinding it with her foot. Immediately, she took out another one. I watched her light it again and push the wayward hair from her face. It was effortless. She was effortless and daunting and beautiful. Again she paced. Minutes passed and I just watched her. I didn't know what else to do. A car passed on the road, creating a trail of cleared out dusting from the road.

We'd been home for just over two weeks. Sarah had jetted off to London with Felix. Alison castrated her monitor. Life had been busy. And on top of that was our actual lives. Alison had two kids and a neighborhood to run. I had a thesis and research to complete. All the while, we had another life nagging at our every movement and thought. And since we'd been back, I wasn't sure what I'd expected with Delphine. But she was at mine every night. And we cooked sometimes. Sometimes we spent hours in bed, books thrown off in frustration or apathy, and I explored what it meant to be alive with her. She was quite honest about what she worked on most days. I spoke to her parents on Skype once. It made her more real. It made her more alive for me. I wasn't sure what they talked of, because it was mostly in french, though they spoke to me in English.

Every moment I was with her, was a moment away from the crazy of reality. Sometimes, when I thought about it, it felt like a play. It felt pretend. It felt like we were faking normalcy. But it wasn't that. We weren't faking anything. We were simply being us, together. And trading tales about how it could be, _after_, made it oddly bearable.

Delphine snuffed another cigarette and stood on the corner again. Reluctantly, almost, she took a step forward, and another, slowly, until she crossed the street.

And though we spent time together, lost in bed, lost in separate corners of the apartment stuck in our laptops and papers, there were hours she disappeared to her lab after school. And she would slip into bed at odd hours, often taking the books that surrounded me and stacking them on the nightstand or floor. Her arms would wrap around me and she would tell me to go back to sleep. And I would fall asleep with pretty french words in my ear, only to wake up wondering if it was a dream because she was gone come daybreak.

"Bonsoir, ma chérie," she greeted me happily and slightly surprised. There was no trepidation as I had watched for the past five minutes on the corner. She didn't even smell like smoke when she leaned down and kissed me with cold lips from the winter outside. "You should be asleep," she scolded slightly as she pulled away to hang put her coat and scarf on the rack.

It'd been her personal mission to take care of me since she found out I was sick. I had strict bedtimes. I had a cupboard filled with vitamins. I had a constant flow of fruit in my fridge, because she was healing me the only way she could. I gave her leeway because I didn't know what it was like to watch someone die. I only knew what it was like to look at someone and mourn the moments you would never have.

"Alison called," I informed her, walking into the den.

"Ah, how is she?" I leaned against my desk while she rummaged in the fridge for a drink.

"You know," I shrugged. "Tweaking, as usual."

"Still no word from Sarah?" she righted, causing me to stop staring at her legs and the expanse of them and all that they meant. I shook my head and frowned a bit. "Have no fear, amour. She is alright, I am certain."

"She promised to call one of us every day," I sighed, rolling my neck. The drugs kicked in and I felt like I could breathe again.

"She's busy," she explained, drinking from the tap after discovering we were dangerously empty on any sustenance in the fridge. "You are all quite..." she searched for the word. "capable. Terrifyingly so."

"That's a compliment?" I asked as she emptied her glass and set it on the counter.

"I mean you are all survivors," she clarified. "I wouldn't know who to bet on in a fight."

"Me, obvs," I chuckled. She kicked her shoes towards the door and came a bit closer to my height.

"Obvs," she mimicked, the word quite clunky on her graceful tongue.

I finally pushed myself off of the desk and took a step towards her. She hugged me tightly without warning or hesitation. I felt her nose in my neck. I felt her hands on my back. As I realized what was happening, I hugged her as well. She was still cold from the weather.

"What's wrong?" I pulled away as best I could.

"Non," she shook her head, taking a deep breath into her lungs and keeping it there. "Rien." She gave me a pretend smile. "I miss you. C'est tout."

"It's been a long day," I agreed."But something's got you worried." I had a task to figure out why she was chain smoking before coming to bed.

"Rien," she persuaded. "I am just busy with research. It's exhausting. The flu virus is a devil." Now that she had to keep her job without intervention, she actually had to present research. She had to re-earn her Doctorate, and for that I was almost thankful.

"You smell like smoke," I pointed out, my nose near her clavicle. "You're not supposed to smoke."

"Neither are you," she observed. "But here you are," I felt her fingers on my throat, tracing my carotid. The tips of her fingers were light and barely there. Her lips were inches from mine. My hands fell to her hips. "You taste like weed." It was accusatory and quite wonderfully sexy in that moment.

I smirked. It was all I could do. There was no defense against a full French press. She was inherently filled with this way about her that made my knees disappear. The weed didn't help my condition. When I saw her, I ached from every conceivable joint in my body. When I saw her my breath stopped, still. The fact that these physiological responses to her existence hadn't faded with time and repeated stimuli made me marvel.

"I needed something to keep my lips warm on the walk home," she explained. She lied. I'd seen her stuttering with her feet and nerves. "I wasn't sure if you'd be asleep." But she was so close, and I forgot that she was lying.

Her hips pushed me back into the desk. My hands moved to brace myself, leaving her hips, sadly. Her lips were on me. Her lips were scalding. Her hands held me. Her hands gripped at my skin tightly. It was dizzying. I could have been upside down at that moment and not known.

"I'm awake," I managed, swallowing and pushing myself up against her. Her height gave her the edge.

"Oui," she whispered, pulling at my top. "Awake," she observed. Her lips were back on mine as we stumble danced about the living room towards the bedroom. Her eyes were crystal clear and big and full to the brim of wanting me. And that was enough. Her tongue was glorious. Her hips were glorious. Her entire being was glorious and it was on me. Her hands pulled. She held my hair and kissed me like she wanted. I was still. "Ce soir, tu es à moi." My knees hit the bed. "All mine." I wanted to nod eagerly, but instead I just let it happen. I didn't want it to stop. She straddled me easily, unzipping my pants, tossing her hair as she did. I grabbed her when she was in reach and kissed and pushed and fought her back.

"Yes," I agreed to whatever she wanted. She didn't even need that. Her teeth were on my shoulder. Her leg was between my own. She rocked against me. My head tilted of its own vocation. She licked and kissed there. Her hands were everywhere. Her breath burned my skin. I could only grasp and grab at what I could, hoping to get a hold of her. But she was wild like the ocean. She was angry like a stallion. She was vehement like a priest. She was raging like a storm. And she was all of this, terrifying and overwhelming and incredibly unsure at the same time, pushing harder, always, pushing for more, still.

"Je suis désolé," she whispered as her fingers moved against me. I couldn't breathe. My lungs were being electrocuted. "Je ne peux pas vous perdre," she pushed into me harder. Her mouth was in my ear. Her lips were sucking. Her body pressed against my own. My fingers dug into her shoulders. I couldn't hear anything but her breathing, steady and heavy and erratic. "Jamais," she promised.

I was lost. I lifted my head only because my entire musculatory system spasmed and contracted.

"Fuck," I sighed. I felt the word leave my mouth and stain her pale skin. My body was not my own, still. But I relaxed enough to lay back in the bed and relax my strangle hold I had on her neck and shoulders.

Delphine kissed my cheek. She kissed my neck, softly. She sat up and pushed her hair from her face.

"I have waited to do that all week," she murmured, trailing her nose along my chin, along my lips, along my eyelid. I was still beyond word formation.

"Well," I began, immediately losing my train of thought. "Yes, okay." I lulled in the bed.

Delphine got up, half undressed, and fastened the latch on the door. She took her time. I laid there listening, occasionally opening my eyes. I heard the curtains close with the signature metal hiss.

It was only after I heard the smack and hitch of a lighter that I found the energy to sit myself up on my elbow.

"That," she motioned at me with the cigarette between her fingers, pointing at my body, still fluid and stretched and recently destroyed. "Is a wonderful look on you." She tossed her hair again and took a drag."Séduisante." She smiled to herself. She seemed to hold the entire wall up. She was not fazed that she was half naked, clad in only her skirt and tights. Or that I was much the same, but immobile on the bed.

"Don't we have a no bi-lingual rule in the apartment?" I leaned back again and collapsed within myself.

"Oui," she observed. I heard her crack the window, and after a minute shut it again. "Bonsoir, again," she hopped into bed with me. I kissed her sweetly. Anything I did would look angelic compared to her.

"What got into you?" I sighed, looking up at her as she leaned against the headboard. My head butted her hip and I sat there, perpendicular to her, no need to get closer, no urge to move at all, still.

"I am not sure," she shook her head. There was the faintest blush on her cheeks, hidden and masked by her soft skin that normally betrayed nothing of the sort. "I saw you," she shrugged, unable to find words. She licked her lips and I wanted to kiss her. Instead I threw my arm over her thigh and half-hugged it from my position.

I felt her hand in my hair, soothing and simply calming me. It was nearly three in the morning, and this is where I was.

"Why were you pacing, outside?" I ventured, quietly. I didn't want the answer. But I had to have it.

"It would do no good to deny it, I suppose?" she asked simply. I did not move. "I've tested everything," she sighed. "I cannot find what is making you sick. Tonight I tested my last hope."

"And it wasn't it?" I guessed.

"Non," she sighed. "The only things left are genetic and dangerous."

"Well, things were getting a bit boring, eh?" I smiled into her knee, pressing my face into her thigh. "We needed something a bit more radical."

"I am losing you," she whispered. I heard her light another cigarette from the nightstand. When I looked up at her, she was looking towards the closed window and curtain pulled over it. "And I cannot do anything."

"That's what's kept you up?" I realized. She nodded. It was dangerous, for someone to look so beautiful using something so deadly to look even more beautiful.

"I should be able to do this," she smiled at the irony of it all. "This one thing. I cannot find Kira. I cannot defeat the neolutionists. But I should be able to figure out your immune system." Her hands were shaky as she drew on the cigarette. I understood the pacing now. I understood that severe fuck and ownership she placed on me.

"Don't worry," I reminded her. "I'm not going anywhere."

We were quiet. She snuffed her cigarette out against the nightstand and angrily sulked. I soaked in this moment and her skin and her nakedness.

"Alison asked us to spend Christmas at her place," I began. We could and would be normal. "You know, a clone Christmas." There was a small smile on her tiny mouth. "Did you have plans?"

"I told my parents not to expect me," she shrugged. "It is not important in my family. We are not religious."

"I was going to ask you to spend it in San Francisco," I couldn't look at her, but I couldn't look away.

"With mamá and papá Niehaus?" she laughed a bit, for the first time. I liked when that happened. Her face changed. It could be long and melancholic, easily. When she laughed it evaporated.

"Yes," I nodded seriously. "You know, if I can live that long." Her face changed and the laugh stopped as quickly as it started. She stood and could not get away from me fast enough.

"You cannot say that," she backed away slowly. I sat up, now, on my knees. It finally made me aware of my body again after she'd disconnected all the switches. "Take it back."

"I'm sorry," I stood on the bed on my knees. She stood opposite of me, edgy and angry. "It was a joke, Delphine. I joke about this, because what else is there?"

"You cannot joke about life and death," she squinted her eyes. Her brow furrowed in confusion. "Do you know what happens when you die?" She almost yelled. "Do you? Have you thought of that? Is the joke funny?"

"I don't..." I shook my head.

"If you die, I have to look at a mound of dirt," she pointed with her entire hand as if it were right there. "I am the one who is left behind and has to look at it. That is why I work so hard. That is why I take hours from you while you are here!" she pushed at her hair.

"I didn't mean-" I tried to calm her down.

"It's just a joke, right?" she continued. "I stare at your blood every day. I test you for every imaginable disease. Because I will be left with the mound of dirt. Me! I will!"

"I'm sorry, Delphine," I got out of bed and approached her. She paced. Her eyes were glass. "It was in poor taste. You have stressed yourself too much."

"I just keep seeing your mound of dirt," she sighed. I reached to touch her and she flinched away slightly. "I am afraid to come here, because you could be gone, and then what?"

"I'm not going anywhere," I promised. "They couldn't kill me if they tried. My own body couldn't kill me if it tried. I am stronger than the German."

"You are the same as her," she shook her head. "In the worst way." That stung hard.

"I'm not going anywhere," I repeated.

"I love you," she sighed, shaking her head. "And it's not fair."

"No," I realized. "It's not."

Slowly, I was able to touch her. I led her to bed. She claimed her ownership quickly and with tongue and fingers and lips. I claimed mine quietly and softly. I sat her in bed. I pushed the skirt from her hips. I pulled at her tights, slowly and methodically rolling them down her long legs. She did not cry. Her jaw was set. I kissed her palms and knelt before her.

"I am not going to die," I promised. "Do not work yourself sick over it."

She stared at me. She broke my heart. People you love do that to you sometimes, and it is the worst thing. I wanted to touch all of her, to assure her, as she had me, to claim that bit of her. But I couldn't. It was right. Not if I wouldn't make it long enough to own her.

"I am not going to die," I promised again. She looked away and took a deep breath. She nodded reluctantly.

"Christmas," she said, just one word.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Come to bed," she whispered. I climbed in beside her after turning off the light.

"Be here when I wake up," I asked quietly. I felt her chin nod.

"What are we getting your parents?"

I chuckled. I couldn't do anything else. I shrugged and pulled her arm to me so I was encased in her.

"It doesn't matter," I decided.

"You're not dying," she reiterated.

"Never," I promised. We shouldn't be able to make such promises.


	3. Quelqu'un m'a Dit

_On me dit que le destin se moque bien de nous-_  
_Qu'il ne nous donne rien et qu'il nous promet tout._  
_Paraît que le bonheur est à portée de main_  
_Alors on tend la main et on se retrouve fou._

"I will be late," I fell back into bed weakly. There was not much fight in me to go to class on time or at all. I had to though. Today was the final for a class of which I'd already passed successfully. Maybe that was the problem. That, or the fact that Cosima was Cosima, and she was warm skin and familiar curves that were more appealing than any form of class or emergency I could encounter outside of the walls of her apartment. That or the fact that I was soaking up every minute with her like a thirsty man surrounding my sea water and she was the rain.

"So?" Cosima smiled while keeping her eyes closed and head nestled into the pillow. "It's cold out there," she reminded me, as if I hadn't known. It was easy for her to stay. She was done, and stuck only with a newly decorated wall filled with clone facts and research.

I'd come back one evening to discover the new wallpaper of tacked up and haphazard facts and string. It baffled and terrified me in one glance. It made me wonder if she knew more than Leeki and the DYAD put together through her methodical diligence and friendly relations with the others. No matter what, it was a wall that continually reminded me of the mess we were in, and in doing so, in having to stare at the German every day, broke my heart and spurred me onwards.

"I have to go to my flat," I explained. "I left my book there. And I am all out of clean clothes." I scooted closer, re-entering the warmth of her giant comforter. She hissed a bit when my hands slipped around her.

"You're cold already," she squinted her face as if it were in pain. "You're like a frozen skeleton. You are going to break apart this winter."

"Oui," I laughed slightly. I stretched my neck so my forehead was on her forehead, and my cold nose was on her cold nose. "C'est moi. But I have a Cosima blanket."

"I forgot you had a flat," she still didn't open her eyes. "I mean, you're here, all the time, right?" She scooted closer. Her hand was nervous on my hip. Her thumb slipped into the elastic of the sweat pants she let me borrow for the night. "But that makes sense. I've never thought about it."

"Oui," I promised. "It is just my big closet. I guess I live here."

"Whoa," she pulled back and I was met with eyes. "Let's pump the brakes on that."

"I don't-" I shook my head a bit, unsure of her meaning.

"We live together?" she was awake now.

"Something like that," I shrugged innocently. "I have slept here for the past two months, and no where else."

"Yeah," she trailed of awkwardly. I suddenly felt mistaken and that was disheartening.

"I mean," I tried again. "My home is in Paris," I explained. "I have a flat with clothes and spices in the cabinets and a café I go to frequently. And a cat. I have a cat. That is my home. My parents have a home, just out of the city. I know the streets. I have friends. That is home."

"You have a cat?" she giggled. Her hand slipped to my lower back, balled in a fist and warming itself between my skin and pants there. I felt her relax.

"Oui," I smiled, remembering who I had been. "I had a fish, but he died before I came here."

"You had a fish?" she looked at me again. Her eyes were glittering and sleepy and amused, and that made me smile. We were both avoiding the essentials of the conversation and what it could mean. Instead we latched onto the easy.

"Mais oui," I shrugged. "Mon chat, Hugo, and Eddy number six, my fish. A petit family. And here, I have you, and this apartment, and my closet."

"Number six?" she asked, shifting towards me in small ways.

"Fish do not do well with me," I shrugged. "Or Hugo. But I've always had a fish. And Hugo, I've always had him."

"Crap," she sighed. She played with my hair. She pushed it aside and traced my temple. "We're going to have to move to Paris, aren't we?" I laughed despite her serious face. Mostly because it was a funny realization I could not understand how she arrived at. Also, because of the 'we'. I liked the 'we'.

"Who knows," I grinned. I kissed her gently to sway the worry. "All I need is a fish and you and good wine, and that is home."

"You can't be real," she smiled and hugged me. "Sometimes I just doubt that you're not genetically modified to be perfect. It sucks."

"I could be," I informed her, kissing where I could reach on her face while she tucked herself into me. I could fail the test for all I cared.

"That would be a twist, wouldn't it?" she sighed into my breastbone. "Wouldn't see that one coming."

"Or I could be a robot," I offered.

"Now you're just being ridiculous," she scolded playfully. "Robots are never late, and you're about to be."

"Merde," I looked behind me at the clock on the nightstand. "I really must go, ma chérie."

"Good luck," she kissed me before I extracted myself from the warm fortress. "See you tonight, yeah?"

"But of course, amour," I sighed, gathering clothes that might have been not worn yesterday and trying to find something presentable. "I'll bring dinner." She sat up in bed, the sheets tucked around her and hiding the good parts. That wasn't true. Her shoulders were good parts, and there they were for me to sneak peaks at while I gathered my clothes and dressed under her even more good eyes.

"I have to tell my mom about Christmas, soon," she began as I hopped about, dressing ungracefully.

"You haven't told her yes, yet?" I found her still in bed while I brushed my teeth.

"I wanted to make sure you wanted to go," she shrugged. I shook my head and rolled my eyes.

"Tell her oui, already," I spit. "I'm game if you are."

"Alright then," she smiled. She had many smiles. I was learning to categorize them all.

"I am off," I leaned over the bed and kissed her before grabbing my coat and scarf. "Don't forget," I opened a bottle on the desk and placed a pill beside her computer. "Vitamins are everyday." She rolled her eyes and the smile faded only slightly. I didn't have time to console her or explain again. I gave her a pleading look and she nodded.

"Good luck," she offered again. "You'll knock'em dead," she assured me. It was foreign to have someone rooting for me, even if it was for something I'd already done. It felt nice. I wish there was a better way to explain it.

"À bientôt, ma petite," I blew her a kiss from the door. "Prends soin de toi."

"Later, gator," she fell back into bed as I closed the door behind me.

As I made my way through the building, I nodded to neighbors who I had come to know in the neighborly and awkward mode of simply nodding and holding doors open every now and then. I held the door as I exited for the neighbor immediately to the right of Cosima's apartment. She did not like me so much. I wasn't sure why though, but I bet it had something to do with her pounding on the walls every now and then. Always interrupting. She was not my favorite person either. But I gave her a smile and ventured out into the cold.

I only allowed myself a small peek back at the window of her apartment as I hurried down the street. I worried for her safety. I worried that she was driving herself crazy with the research. It'd only grown when Sarah told her she found a few more clones. To worry about someone so new and innate in one's life was madness, I thought. That did nothing to assuage it at all though.

I sprinted into my apartment building to escape the cold. It was next to the building I studied and taught it. Much sought after on campus, and instead I walked the extra ten blocks to Cosima's every day.

I could have been home already. I quit the DYAD. I could have applied for positions in a university or lab in a city I understood with my cat and fish number seven. Instead I was faking my way through a degree I already had, because the alternative was that life in Paris without Cosima. And after this year, I was not sure. I would have to return to my real life. I would have to resume where I had left off eventually.

Maybe Cosima was right. We would have to live in Paris. That would be wondrous. But to stay here even, forever, with her would be wondrous. To go on holiday with her to Sainte-Maxime. To see the Northern Lights in Alaska. To have New Years with her sisters. To see a film. To kiss the rocks of Machu Picchu. To do all of these things would be wondrous. And I think she thought about them too, in some form.

"Good morning, Delphine," I was met by the eerily familiar voice that haunted my nightmares. To find Dr. Leeki standing there by my door was discerning. It was alarming and terrifying. I slowed and paused my movements to flick the snow from my coat. The smile faded quickly from my lips and the thoughts of normalcy that I latched onto easily.

"Good morning," I returned stiffly, surprised. I resumed my approach to my door and dug for the keys in my pocket. "What are you doing here?" It was uneasy and not as strong as I would have hoped. He smiled that discerning smile that meant to put one at ease, but instead failed horrible, arising the feelings of gnawing in the gut.

"Just came to check in," he was smug. He followed me into the apartment. "I was in the neighborhood, and thought of you."

"I'm actually running late," I left him in the small living room while I ventured to fill my bag in the bedroom. I found the gun in my nightstand and put that in as well. This was what my life had come to, now. I'd had it since I learned of Helena.

"I won't take long," he called. I peaked to see him perusing the sparse contents of the kitchen and living room. I rummaged in my drawers. The apartment was clean and neat and not lived in, which made it easier. "Just have some information I'd like you to pass on to your girlfriend." I could hear the smirk in his voice. I zipped my bag and returned to find him seated at the table, folder in front of him. I'd picked my side. Now I was coming into contact with the enemy, for the enemy is simply someone on the opposite team with opposite and contrary goals.

"I quit working with you," I reminded him, placing my bag by the door and searching the bookshelf in the corner for what I needed. "I quit the DYAD, and I have no more of your research. A clean break. I will sign whatever confidentiality agreement you need. I could never say anything," I continued to prattle onwards. "You can leave Cosima out of this."

"You know that's not possible," he watched me while I avoided him. He crossed his legs and sat so condescendingly. "We need her. We need her data. We need her mind. We need her body."

"You won't get her," I shrugged, finally standing still to look at him squarely. I genuinely believed it. "She won't agree." I wouldn't agree.

"I'm coming to realize that," he sat forward slightly. "We know about Kira," he slid the folder forward.

"I swear to God," I took a step closer. He held up a hand.

"We don't need her, yet," he assured me. "Sarah is a separate entity. I'm here to talk about Cosima only."

"They are all one entity," I corrected.

"True," he conceded that point. "But this is about what is important to you. The only one of the clones that matters to you is Cosima. Unless you've fallen for Alison as well?" I glared at him. He chucked slightly.

"I'm listening," I crossed my arms.

"We have a modified contract," he slid the folder towards me. I began to protest. "Just have her look it over. Tell her it comes monitor free."

"She's unmonitored now," I reminded him.

"She is," he assured me. I wasn't sure I believed it. "But I can't leave it like that for long, not if she is going to just run off."

"She isn't," I promised.

"The pieces have been put together," he stood. "We've been found out. The double blind has been exposed. The experiment doesn't end though, we don't free the subjects back into the wild or to a chimpanzee reserve. Instead, the experiment changes now. We adapt to what data we are given."

"They just want lives," I looked at the thick stack of papers on the table. I didn't trust it. Everything inside of me told me not to trust it. "Why can't the agreements be honored? Look at what you've done to Alison."

"Indeed," he strolled around the table. "Alison changed the game on us. Donnie has been dealt with, and she is without a monitor for now. We haven't found Sarah yet. If things do not change soon, I'm afraid putting the rats back in their cages might be the only alternative for the higher ups."

"You can't," I shook my head, following his metaphor.

"Just," he slid the folder and papers forward again. "Have her look through this."

"Is it scrubbed again?" I looked at him accusingly. He smiled and chuckled to himself.

"Just have her look," he repeated himself. "We have more information for her than she would know what to do with. Tell her the others will be left to their own devices if Alison acknowledges her contract. Tell her about the life you could have together," he stood closer to me. I closed my eyes and felt bile burning my throat, churning with words and threats I wanted to toss at him. I looked further away, at my bag, at the gun there, at the butcher knives on the counter. I could end it. "Tell her what you both could have, if she would just consider what is in here."

"She won't," I shook my head. His body was towering, lean and weak.

"I will leave the persuasion up to you," the smirk was there, threatening now. I felt his hand push the tips of my hair away from my neck. My body tensed and rebelled and betrayed my aversion. "But it would be for the best, if you're going to help us cure this sickness that seems to be cropping up." My eyes snapped open and looked at him, fearful and wide, I knew they were. "Until we meet again, Delphine," he retracted his hand and left me standing alone in the apartment. I heard the door click, but still could not move. I dropped the heavy textbook on the table that echoed in the walls with a thud.

"Fuck," I swore, my feet still not moving. My eyes falling on the stack of papers.

I sat at the table and opened the folder to begin look through the paperwork. I started with the contract, and I fought the urge to rip it apart right there. Somewhere on campus the bell wrung to signal the time. What felt like a few pages later, it tolled again for noon. My final was over and I missed all of it. I didn't care. I flipped through the pages, spread them across the small table beside the kitchen. I searched my fridge for food, but it consisted of only an old lemon and half dozen old eggs. I didn't even have ice. I drank warm tap water and stared at the table and the figures and the data there.

My phone rang once or twice. The bell tolled again. I jotted notes in a notebook while reading everything that I could. It was only after the fourth ring of my phone that I sat back and surveyed the space before me, the books I'd pulled and set out to look for things. The papers I'd tried to keep in order for Cosima. My notebook, pages ripped and stuffed everywhere and in books and between pages.

I kept going through the information in my mind. The basis for the research, at least what felt like redacted and slightly slimmed down methods, not fully illuminating everything, but enough to definitely spark Cosima's interest, if she wasn't already dying to figure out the puzzles. This could make her change her mind. I knew that.

It rang again quickly after stopping.

"Oui, ma chérie," I answered after seeing the name on the screen. I flopped against the back of the chair and stretched. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she assured me. "How was your test?"

"I didn't go," I sighed. I could not lie. "Things came up."

"Okay, then can you come home?" she didn't seem angry. She seemed bothered though. And anxious.

"What's happening?" I stood, closing books, stacking papers. "Is someone there?"

"I think it would just be better if you came as soon as you could," I could hear her pacing. "I'm fine."

"Five minutes," I promised, hanging up and grabbing everything from the table. I shoved the papers in the folder as best I could. I shoved it onto the pile of books and grabbed them and my bag by the door before bolting, not bothering to lock behind me, forgetting my coat until I was already in the cold.

I ran as quickly as I could down the block. Campus passed as the cold air prickled my lungs. Leeki this morning in town, who knew what he could be up to. He could have been there with Cosima as we spoke. It could have been anyone. My limbs trembled in the cold. My lungs constricted and did not want to breathe because I could not remember the last time I sprinted across anywhere or with such urgency.

The door was opened by a neighbor as I pushed past them and sprinted up the stairs. I juggled the books and bag in my hands and strapped to my arms as I tried to locate and open the door.

"Cosima?" I huffed, throwing it open and barreling inside. "Ma moitié?"

"Yeah, hey," I heard her as I struggled to shut the door behind me while balancing the entirety of my hands. "It's okay. Slow down. Easy, tiger." I stared at her and made a cursory look about the apartment. I dropped the books and my bag and the folder on the counter. "You're frozen solid," she observed. "I told you I was alright."

"What happened?" I grabbed her cheeks, searching her face as if I could see the problem on her eyes. I realized I was very cold when her cheeks were so warm. I was still breathing heavily. "I ran here. I forgot my coat. I'm sorry. You are fine?"

"Hey, it's okay," she nodded, searching me. "I didn't want to talk over the phone. I don't trust any of them but the clone phone." Of course. I should be the same way. Leeki knew where she lived. He could be listening right now. I couldn't be that paranoid though. It would ruin my life.

"Stop calling it that," A voice interrupted after the door to the bathroom closed. I snapped my head up, breath stalled mid gulp. "I hate that word."

"Seigneur Jésus," I heaved. "This?" I took a step back from Cosima. "This is why you called me?" I knotted my hand in my hair.

"Bonjour to you too, Delphine," Alison smiled and cocked her head from the bedroom.

"I thought you were in danger!" I scolded Cosima. She looked at the floor. I rubbed my arm awkwardly to give it some warmth. "And you!" I looked at Alison. "What are you doing here? Leeki is here!"

"What?" the clones said in unison. I nodded. I leaned against the wall beside the door.

"Leeki came to me this morning," I informed them. "That is what came up," I looked pointedly at Cosima. I was shivering.

"You don't suppose he knows?" Alison ventured in the quiet.

"He said you did not have a monitor at the moment," I calmed her. "You could be watched, but I am not sure. He cannot find Sarah. Maybe they are stretched thin."

"Okay, so that's good," Alison observed. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"But you two shouldn't be together," I reminded them. "The less contact the better. They are looking for reasons to lock you up, to monitor you."

"She had to come," Cosima interjected.

"What about Sarah? Is she here too?" I was in a huff. We were normal this morning. We were normal and we did not worry about these things. And then I got out of bed.

"No," Cosima shook her head. Alison crossed her legs primly. "Last we heard from her, when was it? Two days ago?" she turned to Alison, who nodded affirmatively. "She was in Scotland."

"Just, give me a moment?" I asked. "It is a pleasure to see you, Alison." I offered it genuinely, she gave me a slow nod. "I just need a moment. It has been a day."

I moved to the kitchen and ran the water, drinking from my cupped hand under the faucet. It was cold, and did nothing to thaw my skin. I was trying to recover from being a dizzying swirl of fear. I held my hand there, staring and sipping, shoulders hunched. This is what my life was now. I heard Cosima sorting through something on her desk, and she spoke quietly to Alison, though I did not listen above the flow of the water. I just let it continue as I stood and braced myself against the counter.

A small bowl with a bow on it caught my eye though. A small yellow fish darted to one side, then back towards me. I took a step towards it and turned off the water. I took a deep breath and remembered the normalcy.

"Bonjour, petit poisson," I leaned my chin on the counter and held my face against the plastic. I took a deep breath. He swam about, ignoring me quite easily.

"Welcome home," Cosima whispered behind me. I stood up and turned to her. "I had a better night planned for us, but... so it goes," she did not move towards me. "Meet Crick." She nodded her head back towards the bowl. I smiled to myself. "I figured it wasn't that it was a fish, but that Eddy was an unlucky name for a pet."

"Could be," I agreed. We stood opposite each other for a moment, awkwardly glancing and nervously twitching.

"Why did Leeki see you?" she asked innocently.

"To get to you," I looked back at the fish. "Why is Alison here?"

"Sarah sent her more samples. And got us Helena's samples, too," she explained. I nodded. "She didn't want to chance mailing them again."

"New sisters," I kept nodding. I couldn't handle the ones she had.

"What did you tell Leeki?" she whispered again, quieter than before.

"That he couldn't have you," I gave her a small smile. She smiled as well. "He wants me to persuade you to take the new contract."

"And?" she looked at me nervously. Fiddling with her fingers.

"And I do not trust him," I explained. "But he came to my home, and he all but threatened it. I can't have that."

"He wants the fish now, too?" she pretended to be surprised.

"Probably," I nodded seriously.

"We'll figure it out," she shrugged it all away easily.

"Let us add to the Wall, then," I pushed away from the fish and counter. She caught my arm before I could walk past her. "It will be a long night."

"I didn't mean to frighten you," she explained, arms circling my waist.

"Everything frightens me, now," I returned. I kissed her forehead as she leaned into me. "You are frightening. Losing you is frightening. Everything is effrayant."

"Okay, seriously," Alison stood on the other side of the apartment. "I can see you. I can hear you."

"That's yours," I looked down at Cosima. "That is yours to deal with." She gave me a smirk and eye roll.

"Alison," she scolded without looking.

"We have important science-y things to determine. That's your part in this," she reminded us. "And you're too busy being loved up and playing house."

"Seriously, just take a spliff from the box on the dresser," Cosima shouted. I laughed and heard Alison flop onto the bed exaggeratedly. "Take a chill pill, geeze."

"We should get to work," I acknowledged.

"Tell me everything," she departed from me and sat at the desk.


	4. San Francisco

_I wake with you, I feel your coat, sleep late afternoons-_  
_and I hitched along, but I turned wrong,_  
_how you moved me along, with your shepherd songs,_  
_every time you opened up to sing ._

The fog was sitting like a fat cat on the bay, lazy and in no hurry to move along or do much of anything at all. It smothered the air and made it hard to see and breathe and I loved every second of it since the doors opened leading to the taxi line. The chill in the air kept it frozen in space and made me breathe deeper, holding it more, it was different than university. It was the crispness of the Pacific. Landlocked peoples do not understand what they are missing. They do not appreciate the simple change in barometric pressure and salinity content of an air like this air.

"You should call Alison," Delphine reminded me as we climbed into the cab and the driver slammed the trunk.

"And miss the ride?" I shook my head. "She can wait. We have this, now." I watched her smile and give me wondrously sparkly eyes. Maybe it was the fog that clouded my head. It was most likely her thought. I had a theory that she knew what she did to me when she looked at me in certain ways, but for some reason kept doing them anyway. Like the look she gave me over her computer screen at night, finger tucked between her lips, eyes like embers. Or the one when we had coffee and I said something she enjoyed. She looked at me like I was alive and precious. Each different look changed the game.

I'd promised a clone-free trip, at least until I spoke to Alison and she told me that didn't work for her and I was under the same orders as Sarah. I didn't think we had a leader. We were all after our own means, though in search of the same end, but we played our parts. Alison was lost, but she kept us together, as the backbone of the team. Maybe team mom was more apt. The one who brought the oranges and reminded us to check-in if we were going to be coming home late. "Can we go to Broadway and Columbus?" I asked the driver as he got into the driver's seat.

"On the hill?" he turned to me. I nodded and sat back in the seat. "Okay, no problem."

I coughed into my elbow heavily as we left the airport. Delphine rubbed my back, leaning towards me. I shook my head and caught my breath. I searched my coat discretely and found only trace amounts of blood. I rubbed them in so she would not worry harder. I had been slowly getting worse. She had been slowly reverting back to spending nights at her lab and awkwardly asking for my blood, and scans and for me to allow her exams. It was worse than she knew, though. And that was the least I could do for her.

"Have some water," Delphine handed me her bottle quickly.

"I'm fine," I insisted. But she looked so worried, I drank anyway.

"You're not fine," she continued. Her hand was cool when it dipped along my forehead to my cheek to the back of my neck. "You are warm."

"I'm fine," I reiterated. "Now look," I pointed back out the window of the car. She scooted a bit closer to me, looking with me, following my finger. "We'll see the bay soon enough." I coughed a bit more, adjusting my throat, swallowing as best I could to avoid another showing.

"First time here?" The driver looked at us in the mirror. I caught his eye, and in doing so saw Delphine searching the window eagerly.

"Hers, yeah," I informed him. "Is it obvious?"

"We take the long route then," he decided. "To the wharf."

"I like your style," I nodded appreciatively.

"It's Christmas, and I'm a sap," she shrugged as if it were nothing.

The city passed as we wove along the streets and buildings, tracing the peninsula, gazing into the impenetrable fog. Delphine ooh'd and awed with the best of them, following my fingers as I constructed the city behind the veil where we could only see bits and pieces. I promised her a nicer day eventually, and that the sun would burn it away by afternoon. I was going to give her an unforgettable week.

"No snow," she let out a relieved sigh. "Thank God."

"Just frosty winds from the bay," I promised. I felt her hands wrap around my forearm. She held tight and rested her chin on my shoulder, looking with me out the window. I closed my eyes and took a picture. This moment. The noise of the tires on the pavement and the traffic around us. The smell of her hair beside me, wafting and numbing me. Her fingers, each of them on my arm, I could place them through my coat sleeve. I opened my eyes and willed it to stick.

"Am I supposed to be this nervous?" she looked at me, eyebrows peaking with worry and fear. I saw her swallow. I bit back a laugh and remained sympathetic.

"There's no reason to be nervous," I promised again. We'd already done this once or twice on the plane ride out here. "You've met parents before, right?"

"Non," she shook her head, growing a bit more startled. "Non. I've never... merde. Not like this, at least."

"Hey, it's fine," I assured her. "Just be yourself. You're like, inherently charming. Just roll with it. My parents are... smothering. So let them smother."

"And if they hate me?" she continued. Her hands wound around my forearm more until she was hugging my arm.

"They couldn't," I promised. She didn't look at ease. "If they do, then I'll just tell them I'm a clone, and that will take a lot of pressure off of you."

"Well, that might help." I kissed her worried cheek.

"Thank you so much for the ride," I leaned forward a bit as we approached my childhood home. "It's this one, on the left. Yeah, the one with the flag and wildly waving couple," I smiled at the sight. I slipped him money and he nodded, parking and getting out to get our baggage.

"There they are," Delphine observed. "Mamá and Papá Niehaus." It was an awe as if she'd just seen a unicorn. Granted, one that would spear her upon sight. But awe nonetheless.

"Yup," I looked with her marveling at the two people who bore and raised me.

I kissed her cheek and got out of the car, leaving her to make her decision that was already decided. It took her an extra few second, but the other door opened eventually and warily, though confidently presented, she stood in the California sun, filtered through the clouds and cold. She wore it well.

"We could have picked you up!" My father worried, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs as our luggage met the curb. "You should have given us the flight information." He scolded gently though purposefully. "Let me get the cab," he took a step towards the man who was already back in his car.

"I've got it covered, Dad," I shook my head. I tried to look back at Delphine, but she was only standing on the curb awkwardly.

"You should have let me," he started. I hugged him tightly. "Oh, my girl, it has been too long," he sighed, kissing my temple.

"Let me in," my mother interrupted, grabbing me before my father even let me go. "Oh, baby, look at you," she held my shoulders and shook, pulling me to her after a quick appraisal. "You're withering away. You spend too much time with microscopes," she scolded me and loved me all at once.

"I missed you too, Mom," I rolled my eyes. She ignored it and hugged me again, tighter this time.

"I'm a mom, I worry," she hugged and hugged and hugged. "It is so good to see you."

It only took a moment, but I felt like I'd never left. I hadn't realized how much I missed them until they were standing right in front of me, smiling familiar smiles and looking at me with parental eyes. I took a step back and guided Delphine by the hip to the spotlight.

"Mom, Dad," I presented her like a cat, proud and freshly bloody with a garden bird on the kitchen counter. "I'd like for you to meet Delphine. Delphine, my dad, Peter, and my mom, Julie."

"Enchanté," she smiled and made them swoon. I couldn't understand her nerves, though they were there, underneath the cool and calm exterior. She held her hand out for them to shake.

"We've heard so much about you!" My mother scooped her up. I'd warned her of their inability to resist hugging. "You are a knockout." There it was, the embarrassment. Delphine hugged her back as best she could with her arms pinned around her. "I mean, honestly, look at you."

"I've heard so much about you as well," she returned the niceties. She had, over the past few hours, taking a crash course in my family so as to not be ambushed.

"It is a pleasure," My father did the same, hugging her into a patented squeeze and lifting her slightly. This could have been worse. I tried to remind myself that. I also tried to think about why I thought this would be a good idea.

"Thank you for inviting me into your home," Delphine offered as best she could from his arms.

"Wow, just look at you," my mother continued. "Good job, Cosima," she gave me an exaggerated wink. "You bring honor to the family in your endeavors."

"Alright, okay," I gave her a look that begged for her to stop. Delphine laughed and ducked her head shyly. "We can stop now."

"But you just got here," My father reminded us.

"And it's cold," my mother answered. "Come along, girls, we can get you settled and get lunch started. I want to hear everything. Where you met, how long you've been dating, what you're studying, how are your grades? I need updated."

My dad grabbed our bags and the flurry of welcoming dulled only slightly. I grabbed Delphine's hand and squeezed as we slowly followed my parents up the stairs to the house. She gave me a hopeful glance. My parents rattled on about something else I hadn't filled them in on in too long.

"You did good," I whispered. "They love you."

"They love you," she smiled, reminding me.

The decorations in the house were full and ancient. Lights were strung and hand-print ornaments dotted the big windows in the front. And that was just from the porch. Inside, the tree towered in the corner and the fireplace was blazing with our stockings in a neat row. It smelled like home, mixed with Christmas.

"Ah, que c'est beau," Delphine complimented the house. "It looks wonderful and homey."

"Thank you, honey," my mother took her coat while my dad took our bags up to my old bedroom. "I supposed I went a bit overboard when I heard you both were coming."

"Don't let her fool you," I moved about, looking at pictures and decorations, "she always does this." I had an entire lifetime of Christmas tradition orchestrated by my mother, or an agent of Santa's brigade, as she was known this time of year. The entire gambit: gingerbread houses, decorating cut out cookies, stringing popcorn, wrapping gifts, tinsel, everywhere. This year was actually simmered compared to others. There was just the tree and the stockings and the lights. I did hope there were cookies, though.

"It's merveilleux," she continued, looking with me. "Is that you?" she pointed towards a picture on the mantle. "Aww," she cooed.

"I think that's the first day of school, right, Cosima?" my mother hovered. "She was so eager, she was up at four in the morning, afraid she'd miss the bus."

"Aw, ma petite," Delphine struggled not to laugh. I shrugged. "Look at this," she pointed to another.

"Mom, seriously?" I asked. "You couldn't have put these away?"

"It's not like I have the video of you dancing and singing after bath time queued up," she shrugged, as if I should have been thankful. "It could have been worse."

"Oh, I want to see that," Delphine spun towards me with a big smile.

"See?" Mom gestured matter-of-factly.

Delphine put her arm over my shoulder to stop my sulking. My mom made us sit on the couch while searching about for coffee in the kitchen. The both eventually joined us and we sat about, being questioned. Delphine took it very well for a first timer. She answered their questions honestly, and I learned things about her as well, that I'd never thought to ask. She made them laugh. She impressed them with her doctorate. She shined. They relaxed around her and the interrogation slipped into conversation.

"I have to take this," I stood as my pink phone rang. "I'll be right back," I looked at Delphine pointedly.

"Go go," she urged.

"We won't bite," my parents promised.

"Hey," I answered as I walked into the dining room.

"You were supposed to call when you landed," Alison reminded me. I bit my tongue and looked out the windows towards the bay before pacing a bit. I snuck a glance into the living room to see Delphine toss her hair a bit and hang on my parent's every word.

"Alison, we're safe and we're fine, stop worrying," I scolded.

"Easy for you to say. With Sarah gone to God knows where, and you across the country," she rambled. "I'm the only one on the homefront."

"You're fine," I promised. "You're seriously close to losing it," I explained, walking towards the office. The bookshelves were still brimming. "You need to relax. Enjoy your kids. I'll think of something to get you out of the contract."

"How's it going?" she switched the conversation abruptly. She did then when I reminded her of the thing she couldn't forget.

"Good, good," I decided. "So far, at least. They love her."

"Well, because she has the whole foreign thing. It wears off after a while," I heard her slamming something on her end.

"Right," I chose to pick my fights. "Listen, I have to get back."

"Be careful," she offered.

"Relax," I retorted. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Okay," she hung up promptly.

I found myself standing in the office, looking towards the kitchen. I took a moment to look at the books. I saw my trophies. One from a half-season of six-year-olds soccer. Another from a science fair. My high school diploma on display with both of my parents. A picture of us all together at graduation. My parents on their anniversary. Everywhere I looked was a reminder that I had existed before discovering I was a clone, and that had to mean something. And I very much did not want to die.

"Your mom said I could find you here," Delphine's voice made me turn quickly from the bookshelf behind the desk. I wasn't sure how long I'd been perusing. "They went to the market to get some stuff for dinner. Apparently there was a miscommunication about your dad and some chicken."

"Yeah, he forgets things," I chuckled softly and turned to look at the desk, bracing myself on it at the hip.

"Are you alright, ma chérie?" I watched her walk towards me. She glided. It wasn't fair.

"But of course," I gave her my best fake french accent. "I'm sorry if they're a bit... parental and embarrassing."

"They are adorable," she promised. "And very proud of you."

"Yeah, well," I shrugged. "Do you want a tour?"

"Mais oui," she smiled. I extended my arm and she grabbed.

I took her through the kitchen and showed her the tiny backyard. I explained the house, and how my parents bought it and fixed it up before the neighborhood was what it was. I told her about hitting my head on the bathroom door when I was six and needing stitches. I pointed out the spot on the kitchen wall where my handprint remained from when we painted. I showed her my height marks on the door. I showed her the step where I tripped and broke my arm. I pointed towards my parents room and the guest room.

"And this is mine," I opened the door which embarrassingly was covered in horrible band stickers. Inside was not as cluttered as I remembered, but that could have been from my mother's incessant need to clean and tidy. But there were stacks of textbooks and notebooks against one wall. And posters of the periodic table on another. On my desk sat my old desktop computer, almost waiting for me to start my homework. My bed was only a double, but look oddly smaller now that I was accustomed to a bigger one in my apartment. Pictures of old friends littered the walls with medals from this or that. It looked like it was preserved in amber.

I stood back with the luggage and watched Delphine slowly move through it. Her eyes saw everything at once, and picked up on smaller its of who I once was.

"It is similar to mine," she mused over her shoulder, tracing the bulky monitor on my desk. "Though mine has been redone into an office."

"It's eerie," I hopped into my bed, which again was neatly done, courtesy of my mother.

"And I get to stay here with you?" Delphine looked at me, playing with a snow globe from Yosemite absently.

"Unless you'd like the guest bedroom," I rested into the pillows, tired from the trip and trying to turn off my brain. "But there's a draft in there, and the bed is lumpy. In here would be better."

"Ah, d'accord," she hopped into bed beside me, still shaking the glass orb. Her shoulder touched my shoulder and she cocked her head to rest on the crook of my upturned elbow. "Here will just have to do, then."

"I can't believe we are here right now," I mused as she stared into the water, holding it up to her face and distorting the world. "I never thought I'd meet you, and now you're in my childhood bedroom."

"If only we had Crick," she mused as well.

"My parents like you, I can tell," I decided, looking at the glow int he dark stars on the ceiling.

"They're nice," she continued. I felt it growing in my chest. I stifled it as long as I could, but that was impossible to keep down. I coughed hard, jolting upright in bed and bringing my hand to cover my face. Delphine joined me, rubbing my back again. I coughed and coughed and could not stop until I felt as if I hacked myself raw.

"Ma chérie," she whispered, wiping my face, holding me up, trying to hold me together at the seams. "I can make you tea, if you tell me where to find it."

"No, no," I shook my head purposefully. "I'm fine." She gave me that look. "I am. I'm fine."

"This is not fine," she held up her bloody hand.

"There is a bathroom, near the stairs," I pointed.

"I will bring you water," she said dismissively. She was upset. And rightly so. I laid back in bed and traced my fate with the pseudo-stars above me. It all made perfect sense, suddenly. Quite crisply it came into focus. I stretched and found the snow globe tucked into the covers as it had been thrown when Delphine sat up with me. I heard the water running in the bathroom.

_I've got a plan. I will need your help. Do not tell Delphine._ I texted Alison and shoved the phone back into my pockets.

"Drink this, mon coeur," she came back into the room and handed me a cup of water. She knelt by the bed. I handed her the snow globe to trade. She looked at it and smiled a bit. I drank and placed the cup on the floor beside my bed. I worked purposefully. I pulled her into bed. She wanted to scold me for pushing myself too hard, but I felt her pressed against me and that was enough to silence anything else.

"I love you, you know that, don't you?" I asked. She drug her knuckles along my cheek.

"Obvs," she grinned. It did not stay, because there was too much worry in her still for that to remain.

"This is going to be the best holiday ever," I promised grandly. She placed the snow globe on my chest. I spread my legs so she was lying more flat. I looked at her through the snow filled water and over the Half-dome constructed inside.

"The start of many, non?" she asked, still not looking at me.

I looked at the stars on the ceiling and nodded.


	5. The New Year

_So everybody put your best suit or dress on_  
_Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once_  
_Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn_  
_As thirty dialogs bleed into one._

"Oui, oui, maman," I stuttered into the phone quickly, hoping she would hear me over the celebration on her end and voices on mine. "Bonne année et bonne santé!"

"Will we see you for summer?" she asked, yelling in French. I plugged my ear and turned towards the window. Cosima waved to me slightly and small-ly with a wide smile on her face. "We want to meet this girl." And I wanted to show her off, despite my parents apprehensions. Just catching her across the house made me smile and miss her. I rooted my hands in my hair.

"Oui, maman, I am working on it," I promised. That sentence carried a lot of meaning. I was working on inviting Cosima to spend a holiday with me in my home. I was working up the nerve to allow her to meet my parents. I was working to make sure she was alive to come with me. I nodded and smiled at her across the room as Kira hopped onto her leg and pulled at her coat slightly. She was lost to the little girl, now, but I watched and I smiled and it knocked my breath out. "I must go, be careful."

"D'accord, ma fille," she laughed. "Your father sends his love. Bisous. Bonne année et bonne santé," she returned. "Je t'adore."

"Au revoir, adieu," I spoke quickly into the phone. "Avec tout mon amour." She was gone a second later, no doubt swept into the frivolous party they were invited to by my father's colleagues.

I hung up my phone and slid it onto the dining room table. I heard the laughter from the other room, the squeals from the children running down the stairs. The clinking of glasses and overwhelming frivolity of it all. Music piped quietly through the house and Alison danced about between the rooms, bringing in more drinks and food. I just watched and savored it.

Softly, the words and melody of a certain song caught my ear. I turned and looked out the window, expecting to see Leeki in the bushes. Instead there was just snow, falling slightly and instead filling the world. I touched the window pane and felt the cold seep through my fingertips, expelling the warmth their with tiny breaths radiating from my palm. It reminded me of the coldness of Cosima's attic, and the dust of the boxes up there hiding away her own nook of an old couch and oddly constructed speaker system that barely worked. She dug for papers she thought she'd once saw about her birth, and I dug through the records stacked in an old crate, deciding on one and playing it. I touched the window there, looking out to the bay that was rolled over and tucked in by a small patch of fog to the north.

"You're missing the party," Cosima's arms wrapped around my waist. I snapped my hand away from the window and let the curtains fall shut.

"My mother remember to wish me a Happy New Year," I explained. Her chin found my shoulder. I swayed with her there. "Only just over four hours late," I observed, checking my watch.

"Could be worse," she mused, kissing my shoulder through the sleeve of my dress and holding it there. That was our motto. That was the way we lived our life now.

"I was just thinking of your attic," I sighed. I wanted to be there again, locked up from the world.

"I hope that's a euphemism," she nearly growled. It was a fun show she gave me. Her arms squeezed me tighter. I hummed into her.

"Non. I don't know. Peut-être," I shook my head. We still swayed slightly. "But I did like the attic."

"A good Christmas," she murmured. "I love you," she placed her nose on my shoulder bone and spoke to my spine, soft so my ears almost didn't have to hear it.

"Give it a rest, for Christ's sake," Sarah bemoaned us from the stairs. "It's gross."

"I missed you, too, Sarah," I turned to her, Cosima still on my back, moving with me. She bit my shoulder and looked at her sister over me.

"You guys are sickening," she cocked her head and popped a snack into her mouth.

"Someone misses Paul," Cosima teased. I was a shield.

"Right, right," she rolled her eyes. "Let's go, Alison is going to lose it if everyone isn't participating in these shenanigans." She turned and reluctantly we followed. "There's my monkey," I watched her pick up her daughter, kissing her cheeks before pulling her to her side. "Tell Auntie Cos to stop being gross."

"Stop being gross, Auntie Cos," she mimicked over her mother's shoulders at us. It was impossible not to imagine Cosima with a little child, happy and in love with it, filling her shelves with their trophies and pictures and awards and projects as her parents had done for her. Her spitting image already doing that didn't help at all.

"Okay, I am going to make you regret that," she slithered out from behind me. Kira squealed and Sarah released her as she sat on the couch. I took a chair and grabbed my drunk while Cosima ran down the stairs.

"Oh, they're going to make a mess," Alison worried, plopping down on the chair.

"Who cares?" Felix poured her more wine. "I want to hear more about San Francisco. I've always wanted to go. Is it as gay as I imagine?" Eyes were on me suddenly. I was not used to being included in the group. It was a recent development, with everyone being much nicer to me than before. Perhaps it was the holiday spirit. I didn't want to imagine that I was trusted and included in the group.

"It was very nice," I offered, wishing Cosima would appear, tell a funny story, give me a wink, and let others talk.

"Come on," he droned.

"What were her parents like?" Alison asked, leaning forward a bit.

"Nice, really nice," I sounded like a broken record. I drank my drink until it was gone too soon.

"Come on, I've always been curious," Alison prodded, filling my glass with more wine.

"They were sweet, doting, even," I shrugged. "They were everything you'd want in parents. They are proud of her. They smothered her. They had a million stories. I think they were amazing and wonderful people."

"I wonder how they made it past the screening for this shindig," Sarah sat back and wondered. "I mean, no offense and all, but you guys picked crazy fucking surrogates."

"We needed different households," Mrs. S shrugged. "You didn't end up so bad. But I was not involved in that. I was just the implantation specialist."

"Because you stole me," Sarah laughed. "Look at the facts. Helena was raised by a cult. Rachael was raised by a different cult. The German's family were drug runners. The Frenchie's parents died when she was seven. Alisons mum is wonky as hell, no offense," she held her hand out to ask permission. Alison just relented. "Seems Cosima got the cushy end of it all."

"But here you all are," I observed, hating myself for opening my mouth. It was unintentional. "All of you are here, and so different. It is a miracle."

"She's right," Felix observed. "To the Clone Club." They clinked their glasses. "Now enough clone talk, I want the skinny. It's time to dish."

"About?" Cosima joined us, she was pale and flushed.

"You two," Felix gestured between us as she sat on the arm of the chair.

"Nothing to tell," she smiled coyly.

The debate started over something or other, and continued when Alison went to check on the children. Cosima relaxed against the chair and my shoulder, occasionally referring her counterparts. She filled Felix in on the spots in San Francisco I couldn't remember names of, but could remember moments I had with her there. I remembered the pictures from the old camera we found in the attic that I insisted on using for the rest of our trip. She showered me in film canisters and I, in turn, took occasionally blurry or off-center photos of us with a giant bridge behind us, or freezing and frowny on a boat bound for a prison island, or tucked in a small restaurant in Chinatown. My favorite, of her with walrus teeth from chopsticks, a goofball, her mother explained was the term. It was endearing. It was us, in her bed, with sheets up to our noses. It was the curve of her shoulder and jaw when she slept and I slunk around the bed when I woke up before her. Now I had my own wall in the apartment, with photos lined up and papering opposite of her research. To offset the ineffability of it all.

"Can I get you some water?" I asked quietly when Alison went again to put a new movie on for the children and Sarah moved to refresh their glasses. I noticed Cosima coughing, quietly, more frequently as the night went on towards a new set of 365 days.

"I'm fine," she shook her head and gave me a face. "This is kind of nice, isn't it?"

"I suppose," I decided. "Next year, we will stay in," I took a sip from my glass. "For the entire winter break."

"Oh yeah?" she eyed me, pupils dilated and clearly feeling the wine. "You'll have to tell Alison then."

"I mean it," I nudged her. "You will need to work on your dissertation. I will clearly spend my hours walking about naked to distract you."

"Good plan," she nodded quite seriously. "Really good plan," she agreed.

"I am the brains, after all," I bragged into my glass.

"Clearly," she agreed into hers. I saw her blush and her eyes that were large and she was oddly awkward in the moment and unable to hide it.

Everyone returned, and the room was filled with laughter and talking again. Cosima slid more into my side, growing more comfortable as the drinks sank into her. And the clock struck midnight, and there were hugs and cheers. And I got kissed with champaign lips that could barely concentrate with their distractedness in smiling and laughing. But I held on harder and I kissed her as if my life depended on it. Maybe it did. Maybe that was the honest truth about that. But with firecrackers going off in the city and backyards around the house, the cheers from the television, I was swept away.

I even earned hugs from the rest. I was still wary of allowing myself to believe I was included. They still had talks just the three of them, more frequently with the approach of Alison's appointment. I kissed their cheeks and wished them a Happy New Year. There were more drinks and there was much more enjoyment. But I wanted to consummate the new year. I wanted to start it off right.

"I am sleeping on my feet, ma moitié," I whispered, pressing my forehead against her hair. I closed my eyes and smiled to it all. She leaned into me while everyone continued to talk in the kitchen.

"What the hell are you always calling her?" Alison looked at me dumbly over her glass. "I seriously can't stand it. It's just so..." she sighed. "So French. It's like a film noir." I laughed a bit at the explanation. "I mean it. It's always so desperate, but not in a bad way. Just in an I-might-never-see-you-again type way. It's astounding. It's always ma chérie this, or ma petite that. I don't get it. I just don't get it. Donnie never called me anything but my name." There it was. The drunk and curious and distraught Alison.

"You don't have any brothers, right?" Cosima asked, turning to me. "Clearly Al needs a little French tickle." I made a face, shocked slightly but more disturbed by her joke.

"My brother is not half as charming as I," I informed her. "You do not need a frenchman, Alison," I turned to her, still lost in her drink. "I see you with a lovely Italian. Or perhaps Portuguese. You do not need romance, as we have it. You need to be lusted. You need to be ravished, and not made to have insignificant conversation and philosophical preoccupations as we do." I stereotyped by her understanding, and she nodded slowly. I explained with my hand, absently, while the other rested on Cosima's hip.

"God, even I'm attracted to you right now," Felix stared at me. I laughed a bit as everyone stared a bit.

"It's the most she's spoken," Sarah observed. I hid a bit. "I get it now, Cos." She shook her head appreciatively. "I didn't before. And maybe I still don't. But for now," she tipped her bottle towards me. "Salut."

"Yeah, well," she shrugged it away, as if she knew it all along.

"But she's right," Sarah crossed her arms and we started to give Alison advice. "Remember that week we ran off to Madrid?" Sarah asked Felix.

"How could I forget, what was his name Paolo?" Felix smiled and grew dreamy. "That is what you need."

"I have two kids," Alison slumped slightly. The booze messed up her hair.

"No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor," I quoted.

The room laughed, and we all tried to fix Alison. I leaned more into Cosima. I touched the bone of her hip. I slipped kissed to her neck from time to time. I did everything I could while trying to keep up with everyone, but eventually I gave up and spent time touching her in small and innocent ways.

"Alright, gents," Cosima pushed away from me eventually. "We are off to bed. You're much too cool for us lame scientists. This is not our natural environment."

"In another world, I couldn't hold my liquor," Sarah laughed, hugging her clone. "See you in the morning, yeah?"

"Of course, breakfast and then we're off back home," Cosima returned. "See you tomorrow," I watched her make the rounds. I waved a muttered bonsoir's with a wave as she pulled me towards the stairs.

Quietly, we crept along Alison's hallway to the spare bedroom. We did not even turn on the light.

Her hands were on my as soon as the door clicked shut behind me.

"Happy New Year," she murmured into my lips. Her hands slipped from my shoulders to the hem of my shirt. We twirled as we took off the other's clothes. Until I was left before her in next to nothing. And through the dark, I could see her looking at me. This hadn't happened before. Now she paused, though. I felt her fingers on my hips. Her head was bent and staring at them as she moved along my ribs. I shivered. It was excruciating. But I stood still. I closed my eyes. She did this a few times, tactily defining me. Her hands slipped to my lower back and she held me, pulling me closer. Her skin was warm and her face was blushing, I could feel its heat against my neck. She kissed me, softly, at first. I stood stark still. Her lips pressed against my jaw. Her lips found my shoulders wanting. Her hands pulled my hips. I felt her hips on my hips and they hipped against me in the darkness.

"J'ai besoin de toi," I whispered, finally lifting my hand to touch my spot- the spot beneath her ear and hairline, the soft bit of skin at the conjunction of her neck and spine and shoulders. I traced my knuckles there, I held it there, I held it all.

"I know," she nodded. I ached with her breath on my skin and her lips moving between words. "I'm sorry," she sighed. Her hands grabbed tighter. I felt her chest pressed to my chest and her mouth on my jaw. She held the back of my neck and wound her fingers there, clinging to me. "I'm so sorry," she found my mouth and kissed me fiercely. She leaned back and pulled me with her. We found the bed. She made me sit.

"Pas de problème, mon coeur," I promised. But she did not hear. Her knees locked around my hips, her forearms went around my shoulders. My hands moved on their own, up her thighs, up her hips. She kissed me with all she had, slow and methodical and not missing anything.

"I love you," she pushed me down again. She braced herself with hands beside my head and kissed me, dragging her hips along my hips and pressing her thighs into me.

"I know," I nodded this time.

"Never forget it," she begged, sucking on my neck, biting softly there. I shook my head. "Never doubt it," she begged, slipping lower. My legs wrapped around her abdominal area.

"Jamais," I promised. She pushed on my thighs. She kissed me. She made me dance and not care how ridiculous I might have looked, twisting and clawing and begging. She took her time. She drug her nails along my thighs. She tested and tasted and teased. I only could feel my hands as they wretched at the sheets, tangling themselves in something stable. "Fuck," I whispered, biting at my own shoulder, stifling myself. That only made her more devious. She left me teetering. She pushed me. She let me fall and I shook as if I'd never known how to move a muscle. "Fuck," I gulped this time. My hands snapped to her head, my thighs wanted to slam shut but I fought them. "Mon Dieu," I held her, begging for no more, no more of the killing and destroying and wondrousness that she offered, because it was too sweet, too much, too great.

She propped herself upon her chin, bringing her arms over my legs. I didn't have it in me to open my eyes. It wasn't what I had in mind for the new year. I had plans for her. Clearly I'd been out played. Clearly I didn't care. I felt her lips, kiss between my hip bones. I felt her drag her nose below my belly button. I felt her press her cheek into the skin there. She hugged me as best she could, laying upon me there. I remembered being in nearly the same spot once over Christmas with a snow globe propped on her stomach. I chanced a look to find her meeting my eyes. I smiled. She looked at me like I was the stars in the sky and the moon and the air in the trees and the sound of the waves on the rocks.

"Mon Dieu," I sighed again, falling back into the sheets.

"God had little to do with that," she slid up beside me.

"There was a bit of God definitely in that," I assured her. "I saw him, trust me." She laughed and accepted my conversion and paralysis, moving her arm around me, kissing my cheek.

"Happy New Year," she whispered. Lazily her finger trailed around my chest and stomach.

"Vraiment," I nodded.

"I want to never leave this moment," she insisted.

"Me too," I agreed. "But we have better moments coming."

"I can't imagine it," she sounded dejected. "Nothing could be better."

"Hmmm," I hummed, finally finding strength to turn towards he. "What about when we get home tomorrow? And I get to-"

"Yes, okay," she swallowed. "I just... I want this."

"Well, we have forever, so do not worry," I promised. I pulled her towards me. The only thing that repeated in my mind was '_I'm sick'_ and they played on repeat and the images of her blood under a microscope and the pile of dirty plagued me suddenly.

"I'd do anything for that," she mumbled. I felt her clutch me with those words.

"Me too, ma petite," I promised. "Me too."

I kissed her now, not out of obligation, but to distract her from it all. Forever is not realistic. Forever is unattainable. Forever is gone and forever is never to be had because it is never existing, despite what anyone says. I kissed for all of those reasons. But also to promise her the unrealistic, and to swear to get the unattainable, and to find what can't be found and to keep what can't be kept and to create what has never existed. It started slowly but it grew wildly out of control with the smallest sigh from her mouth egging me forward to prove her wrong, to prove history incorrect and unassuming.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. I wondered if it was for the same reasons I tried so hard. I ignored it and kissed her back.


	6. Breakable

_Have you ever thought about what protects our hearts?_  
_Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts._

"Are you sure about this?" Alison asked, head on her hand and staring at me intently. She'd been worrying again. She'd been nervous and oddly supportive and very content with being involved in her own way.

"Not really," I shrugged. I twisted the end of the papers and licked. "But it's the only option we really have, right? For the good of the group. For Kira. For everything."

"I could rip up the contract and we could go public sooner," she offered. "You don't have to... I don't know if I can let you..."

"Not til Sarah figures out her end," I shook my head and brought my feet up to rest on the desk. "We can't jump the gun or it's lights out for all of us. And you have two kids. I don't. Plus I habitually cough up my lungs, so I think it's a little more pressing than you're boiling it down."

"You really think so?" she sighed. I nodded again. "I thought you weren't supposed to be smoking." I caught a glimpse of myself in the screen and shuddered at how pale I'd become, how gaunt my cheeks had grown, how smudged and drugged under my eyes looked. Two weeks into a brand new year, and I looked like I was dying. I technically was, but we didn't know why.

"It helps," I pushed on my chest a bit, feeling a rumble there. "I enjoy it. I'm not giving up things I enjoy."

"You aren't looking well," she observed with me. "Is there anything I can do? Are we not trying something?" She was a mother.

"People keep telling me this," I mumbled. "And I'm starting to get offended." I could joke my way out of it.

"How are you feeling?" she ignored my attempt at humor.

"You know," I shrugged, placing the paper in my lips. "I'm alive."

"Are you sure, about Delphine?" she asked as I lit the joint. "She's not going to take it well." I blew the smoke from my lungs. "You can tell her."

"I can't," I shook my head. She pursed her lips. I watched the paper burn a bit. I sighed and looked at the ceiling, missing the fake stars of my old bedroom. Delphine wouldn't let me disappear. I didn't want to let us disappear.

I looked at the wallpaper behind us on the screen. Behind me, as my backdrop, was a wall of pictures she'd taken. I turned, to look at it now as opposed to virtually. I took a deep breath of the medicinal and placed it in an ashtray before standing and walking to the wall.

"Cos?" Alison called to me. I pulled a picture down. I pulled another. I took down a lot of them, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker and quicker and more eagerly until only a checkerboard and mismatched proportion were left there. "We can talk about it. I can help. Delphine isn't going to like this," she repeated. "I just want you to think about it all, from all sides."

"No," I sighed, sitting down with the stack in my hands. "She isn't." I held up the first picture for her. "Look at us," I smiled. "That's us with the redwoods and my parents." Delphine figured out the timer, only through error. She was halfway in front of the rest of us, calling her to join us. I discarded it beside my laptop and onto a pile of folders. "And this," I looked at the picture before holding up for her. "Is us at the wharf, Cannery Row." It showed my arms tucked inside her coat and her arm outstretched to capture us and the giant painted portrait of Steinbeck.

"Cosima," she tried, swallowing and interrupting. I smiled as I looked at another picture and held it up for her.

"I took this one, of her," I showed her Delphine eating strawberries at the farmer's market in the Mission. She smiled and squished her eyes shut as she bit and realized what I was doing. I fell in love with her when it caught my eye. "They were amazing strawberries." I put it down. I realized I was getting more upset.

"Cosima, please," Alison tried again.

"Someone has to know these things," I stopped her and looked at her forcefully, holding it for a moment, chest rocking. "Someone has to know besides us." Alison searched my face. "Someone else has to know for them to be real. They were real." I reminded myself and her. Maybe both. "They are real."

"Oh, Cos," Alison was sympathetic in the way that made me feel pathetic, and covered her mouth and knitted her brow. I took a steadying breath and looked at the next picture.

"We were on a trolly," I showed her the next after a full minute of silence and nerve-gathering. "Took it the whole way to the top and back down again. I can almost feel the sun," I closed my eyes. "And the way her hair looked in it," I shook my head and felt the smile there. "It punched me right in the stomach, you know?" I asked, placing the picture down. Alison steadied herself and nodded.

"Of course," she smiled, egging me forward.

"Oh, and this," I held up another. I swallowed, wiped my eyes, took another hit, and held it up. "She caught me sleeping." It was simply and macro and just a wisp of hair and shoulder haloed by the sun in the window. "Look at what she does to me," I observed, looking at it as Alison did. "She makes me kind of beautiful, huh?" I mused, but not letting the question linger. "Here, I am cooking," I held up another. My back was to the desk and chopping something. She caught me hunched and hard at work. "She kissed me by the bridge," I showed another, Delphine cradling my cheek in one hand and kissing the other. Her face was pale and bloomed with blush in the weather. I smiled so hard my eyes closed, but the camera caught it all. There are certain moments that explode out into the world and continue living.

"You look in love," Alison observed as I forgot myself and was staring at the next one. "Both of you." I coughed a bit. I wiped my nose and blinked quickly.

"I am," I nodded, looking back to her. Alison had the same glassy eyes that I did. She bit her lip in an oddly familiar way that I was currently engaged in as well. "It kind of sucks, actually."

"This is going to kill her," she observed.

"I've been killing her since I first coughed," I reminded both of us. "She just doesn't know it yet."

We were quiet. Alison looked at her hands, she stared beyond the camera of the computer. She sniffled and wiped her cheeks.

"Are you sure Leeki has accepted the deal?" she worried.

"It's in his best interest to honor it," I nodded, picking up the last half of my hard work rolled up and personified. "Or watch whatever this is slowly kill us all." I flicked ashes and looked at the pictures spread out from my haphazard tossing. An entire six months spanned there. Not even a fraction recorded or carved in stone.

"Fuck," Alison sat back in her chair. "You don't think you're going to..."

"Die?" I sat up a bit and coughed heartily. I snubbed my cigarillo. "Eventually," I gave her a grin between hacks.

"If that happens..." she realized slowly. "No one will know the science. That's the most important part."

"Delphine does," I promised, drinking water quickly. Alison gave me a look. "She's on our team. Both of our team. The Clone team. We should have shirts made and compete in company softball tournaments."

As if on cue, I heard the bolt thrown from the door and a second later, Delphine came pouring into the apartment, smile plastered on her face, books juggled in her arms. She was not a graceful member of winter. But the snow flakes glittered in her hair as they turned to water, and her cheeks looked rosy, so it all evened out.

"Bonsoir, mon coeur," she sat everything down and pulled off her coat before sweeping down over me and kissing me gently with a chilly wind and frozen lips.

"Hi," I smiled, always taken aback by how eager and easily she loved me.

"Bonjour, Alison," she greeted the computer after wrapping her arms around me and placing her head on my shoulder. "How are you?"

"Hello, Delphine," Alison greeted her warmly, leaning forward, not betraying anything. "You look cold."

"It's freezing," she shivered against me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of it all. "I just came for a moment. I must get back, but I brought dinner..."

"Wait," Alison called as she went to move. I felt Delphine settle again beside my head. We stared at the screen as Alison held up her hands, holding an invisible camera. Slowly she looked between the imaginary rectangle and stared right at me- right at us. "I want to remember this," she whispered with a smile. Delphine laughed a bit, but nuzzled against me a bit more. I smiled and felt a tear on my cheek that I wiped away quickly. Alison maintained her stare on me. She swallowed heavily and squeezed her fingers. "There now," she put on a smile. "Real."

"Vous êtes un vrai romantique," Delphine almost scolded her. "A very true romantic." Alison shrugged. "May I steal her for a few minutes?" she asked permission. "I will have her back soon. Just a few minutes."

"By all means," Alison offered. "Talk to you two later."

"Adieu," Delphine smiled as I closed my laptop. "Bonsoir again, ma chérie," she kissed my cheek and neck.

"Someone is in a great mood," I observed as she spun my chair around.

"I've got it," she smiled a huge smile that made me smile a huge smile. She kissed me there, bent over me and grinning like a mad woman. "J'ai trouvé le remède!" She was vibrating in her own skin. "I think I have, at least."

"What are you talking about?" I let her hold my cheeks and kiss my face.

"Ma chérie, ma vie, mon coeur, ma moitié, ma femme," she was smiling too big and she was talking so fast and she was accenting each word by kissing my face. "I think I found out what is wrong. I think I can make something to fix it. I am close," she squeezed me. "I am very close. I feel it in my bones."

"That's amazing," I gave her a smile, hugging her as she stood up, pulling me with her. I didn't have it in her to tell her that it didn't matter. "I knew it," I dug my head into her shoulder. She spun us around. I took a deep breath and inhaled her with it.

"I know you haven't told the others," she pulled away. "But if I get this, you will have to. You will have to tell them that we can fix it. You will have to find the others," she spiraled outwards. "I should get back," she kissed me quickly and moved to the desk, digging through the pictures and picking up papers. She added them to her bag. "I brought dinner," she placed the boxes of take out on the counter.

"Aren't you going to explain what is wrong?" I asked, still dizzy in the whirlwind she created. "Can you tell me what you're working on?"

"Soon," she promised, pulling on her coat. "Very soon," she swore. "My heart, it is leaping," she was still smiling. "I am not thinking straight."

"Please, Delphine," I tried to stop her. "Don't get your-"

"Non," she shook her head. "Don't do that," she stopped me. "I am close. I know it."

"This has happened-"

"Je sais, je sais," she scolded. "But this is different. This is not before. Trust me." I couldn't. I nodded. "I promise. I am close."

"Okay," I whispered. We were quiet for a moment. Letting it sink in. Her hope was infectious, just as much as my despair was. "Did you eat?"

"I will," she promised. "Why are the pictures down?" she noticed.

"I was showing Alison," I told the truth.

"Ah, that is why she is romantic," she mused. "I should go. I left my undergraduate in charge of getting the results."

I jumped and hugged her tightly. I pressed my face into her neck. I squeezed.

"I should cure illness more often," she joked.

"Here," I dug through the couch and approached her. "Take this," I put my hat over her ears. "It is a long walk, and I don't want you getting sick too."

"Mais oui, amour," she smiled as I pulled it tight on her. "Do not worry," she promised, leaning her forehead forward onto my own. "We're going to be okay."

"I know," I smiled and closed my eyes to kiss her. "I love you," I whispered as she leaned back. "Don't forget it, okay?"

"Jamais," she promised. "Don't wait up, okay? I will call you later if I can't make it home."

"Be safe," I tossed back worry. She grabbed her bag and tossed me a kiss as she closed the door.

As soon as it closed I slumped onto the floor. It felt as if my heart had been ripped straight from my chest. She was working so hard. She was fighting so much. But I couldn't tell her. After a few moments I stood, no longer able to cry. No longer willing to try. Deliberately I hung the pictures back in their spots. I left the one of us at the bridge on the desk, and filled them all in around the missing spot. I straightened the desk, stacked her books, put the food in the fridge. I made myself busy to calm down.

"Hey," I flopped in the chair and began rolling again when Alison answered.

"Hi," she greeted me. "Are you alright?"

"Fine, great," I nodded. "Did you put the kids down yet?" She nodded. I flared the lighter repeatedly. "Awesome."

"Delphine seemed happy," she offered.

"Yeah, she was," I smiled. "She thinks she's close to figuring it out."

"That's... Cos, that changes everything," she was getting swept away in it just as my girlfriend had.

"No," I shook my head adamantly, taking a huff. "It doesn't."

"It could, we won't need-"

"It doesn't," I reminded her sternly. "Are you ready?"

"Cosima, just, let's take a minute, okay?" she slowed me.

"I'm not sure how long I have," I explained. "She said she'd be gone late, but I'm not sure."

"If you're not going to listen to me," she began. I snuffed my butt again.

"No, wait," I sighed. "Just... can't you sit there? Just give me a few minutes." I could be brave, but not that brave.

"I could, but I won't," she snapped her head a bit. "If you do this," she started.

I pulled out a sheet of paper and stared at it for a moment while Alison spoke.

"What if she is right and finds a cure?" she prodded. I wrote. Nervously. My hand shook. "Or a diagnosis, or whatever, what if she figures it out? There's no telling what Leeki will do to you."

"What if she isn't?" I looked up. "I've watched her fail, and each time it breaks her," I shook my head, returning to writing. "I can't do it to her anymore. What? So she can watch me die? That is what is happening, Al. I'm dying. We die. And I'd rather not have to make her watch me wither away anymore than she has. And the best chance we have," I stopped writing. She was staring at me. "The best chance we have to to get back to the source. They know more than us. They know more than we could ever hope to find stumbling around in the dark. I've made up my mind. Just... shut up and sit there because I can't be alone right now. If I am, I will change my mind." I couldn't think of what to write, but I sat there with my pen on the paper.

"Okay," Alison offered. "Alright."

And so she sat there quietly, watching me. She watched me write the letter. She watched me shove a few pieces of clothing into my bag. She watched me fold the picture and shove it into my pocket. I fed the fish. I grabbed my passport. I stalled. I organized the books. I put away dishes. I made the bed. I stole her shirt that smelled of her. I put _I'm sorry_ over every inch of the apartment I could. I placed an employment contract, signed and filed on the desk. I placed the letter I wrote. I place the snow globe I'd smuggled from home. I slumped into the chair after twenty minutes.

"She won't hate me, will she?" I asked weakly.

"For leaving without an explanation to go work with our sworn nemesis?" Alison summed it up quite nicely. I shook my head. "For not talking to her about it? For not trusting her?"

"I trust her," I stopped that train of thought.

"Then talk to her!" she lamented. "She's going to call me and I'm going to have to explain this crockery to her. Then what? Stop her from coming after you?"

"You lie," I informed her. "That's the plan. You lie, I science, Sarah does PR."

"So we just cut her out?" she paused. "She might hate you for that." I grew quiet. She grew still under the need to apologize but not being able to bring herself to it per say.

"I can understand that," I sighed after a moment of shaking the snow globe and watching the snow fall, the same each time. "I hated her for lying to me." I swallowed and shook it again. "But will she hate me for dying?" I asked quietly, fiddling with the letter. I creased and folded it tightly.

"You're not," she promised.

"Will she hate me though?" I asked again.

"No," Alison promised. "I don't think she could love you less if she tried."

"Okay," I nodded. "That helps. I'll see you in a few hours. Make the call." I had to get off of the call immediately.

"Cosima," she made me stop before I shut the laptop. "Just... one last time."

"For the greater good, right?" I offered. "Don't worry. You're not making me."

"It's not that," she shook her head.

"For science, then," I offered.

"Science outweighs Delphine?" she looked at me pointedly.

"No," I shook my head. "But that doesn't matter."

"I'll see you soon," was all she said. I closed the laptop and sat in the chair for a moment.

I allowed myself one more moment. I picked up my phone as I exited the apartment. I was being cruel. I was doing a horrible thing to her. I got her voicemail.

"Hi," I started, the cold of the outside and January seeping in my lungs. "I know you're busy. I just wanted to hear your voice for a minute. Not clingy, I swear. I just..." I paused and flagged the taxi. "I wanted to... I needed to say... Thank you," I swallowed. "Thank you for working so hard. Thank you for loving me. Thank you. I could never forget it. I love you." I hung up quickly after that and sat in the back of the cab.

"Airport," I asked. He nodded quietly. We drove down the familiar street, passing campus, passing the library, passing the lab.

The only thing I could hope was that she would not hate me. And that she would understand. And that Sarah and Alison would do their parts. And that she would believe me after it was all over, if it was ever all over. I needed her to know that I did it to protect her. I needed her to know that she made me happy. I needed her to live.

"Going anywhere good?" The cabby asked, looking at me looking out the window.

"Not really, no," I smiled at the irony of it.

"Why go then?" he asked innocently. "You might as well stay."

"Because it's the right thing to do," I sighed, leaning my head on the cold glass and unfocusing my eyes so the world zoomed by.

"Usually that is not the fun choice," he waxed poetic with me.

"Not a bit," I agreed. He gave me a supportive smile and watched the road.


	7. Lying

**So, this will be over in a few chapters, maybe. Who knows. I might do an AU next.  
I would like to do a collection of one-shots for parts of this. So I am looking for requests or prompts or whatever.  
Message me here or on tumblr. I have a few ideas, but don't wanna miss any. **

* * *

_Won't you let me give you a hand?_  
_I have an extra I'm not using_  
_Won't you let me lighten your load?_  
_I mean after all your legs are shaking_.  
_I'd be lying, if I ran away. _

It started with _My dearest_ and ended with _I love you, darling, darling girl. _That was what I remembered most of the letter I found the next morning. _That_ morning. Six mornings ago now. Maybe seven. I barreled into the apartment eager to see her, eager to tell her that I was closer. I found it in her genes. I thought I had, at least. I called for her and she did not answer because she was not there.

I bit my nail and stared at the wall of pictures, fixating on which was missing. My foot jumped up and down of its own accord. I stared as if I'd see right through soon enough. I wrecked my brain trying to remember, trying to recall which she would take with her, as if that would solve the entire mystery of why she left. That picture. That would tell me everything. It was the one thing I could stare at and not figure out. I spent more time looking at that than I did at the clone wall. I spent hours looking at the blank spot.

I shook the snow globe and watched the swirling, frosty flakes inside, set awhirl with the smallest flick of my wrist and the maliciousness in my forearm. I shook it hard. I shook it until my arms ached. I slammed it on the desk, gasping a grand breath and resting my head in my hand after the bang it created echoed in my gnawing stomach and cracking joints. I pulled at my hair. I tried to rub sense into myself. The cigarette in the ashtray burned itself out, so I leaned back and sloppily and with shaking hands lit another for myself. I denied another call on the laptop from Alison and picked up the letter again, my fingers trembling to place the cigarette down again.

_I have to do this. _She said that. _For them_. She wrote that too. Her hands had been shaking as well. Maybe I caught it sitting there. I stood and paced, dropping the letter on the stack of folders again, sprinkling a dash of food in the fishbowl, and quickly picking it up again. _You are wondrous, precious and the entire world to me._ She said that about me. It didn't make sense then. None of it. _You appeared, and I understand what it means to be alive. You appeared and ruined me for the rest of the world. I once craved adventure, to see the pyramids or to see Texas, and now, I can die happy just seeing you. You are my pyramid, and you are my shooting star, and you are my Eiffel Tower. _The tower was an eyesore.

"Leave me alone," I answered the incessant ringing finally, throwing the letter on the desk again, as I had nearly a million times in the past few days.

"I don't want to," Sarah stopped me. "And I won't. I need your help."

"Tell me what happened to her, then," I begged angrily. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," she explained. "But I'm so close to finishing my part. I need you to explain some science jargon."

"Niquer ta part!" I spat. Sarah took it. "Je ne m'inquiète pas pour tout de ce plan. J'avais prévu aussi. J'ai eu des plans pour nous et elle leur ruine. Il est tout ruiné. J'étais heureux. J'étais heureux pour la première fois de toute ma vie. Je l'avais. Je ne sais pas ce plaisir était jusque-là. Je ne peux pas donner un baiser sur vos projets ou votre vie." Sarah didn't look at me while I ranted and snarled. I wanted to remind her of a tiger, too. "Is is alright?"

"I don't know," she said again. I finished the cigarette and pounded it into the bottom of the tray.

She went away to fix herself. I knew that. She went away to Leeki, I knew that too. She signed a contract. She got Alison out of hers. She was the sacrificial lamb and she was getting into something bigger than herself, and they would never let her out. And the only thing I could not figure out was what I could do about it. I wanted to save her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to never get out of bed. We asked each other how it could be worse in moments of weakness, and I couldn't imagine now, because I was alone, and she was cold, and I did not know how she was.

_I can't bear to imagine you by my side while I die_. She was afraid. _It is not fair to you_. That wasn't true. I picked it. And she wouldn't die. I had seven different options for treatment to try before it came to that. At least. _If I do this, Kira will have a free life. Sarah and Alison and the others, they will be safe and taken care of. _That wasn't guaranteed. _This is the hardest thing I've ever done, knowing that you will hurt, but I can't selfishly let this happen. _I could have found a cure. I could have saved her. I still could if they'd let me. _What would you do?_ I would never leave her. _ I know you will figure it out. I know because you are so smart. But that is not the point. This is for something bigger than myself._

"Why did you let her go?" I asked, still staring at the paper. When I looked at Sarah I saw her face. I didn't get a choice. I was angry and guilty and worried and bitter and saddened and every other host of emotions that I couldn't even place because they formed this living, breathing hate entity within my very soul.

"I didn't want to," she started. "But she knows the science. She can get the most out of it."

"Out of being their rat in a cage!" I threw the paper on the ground. I shook the snow globe again. "Je ne peux pas le supporter. Mon coeur est en éclats. Que dois-je faire? Que puis-je faire?" I worried to myself. "Do you know what they will do to her? She is sick! Alison was not sick. They would have just drawn blood and scanned. They will dissect her."

"She will learn more and do more than Alison or myself could ever do," Sarah measured her words. I shook and shook and shook again. "She came up with the plan, Delphine."

"Why didn't she tell me?" I asked, stretching my jaw and breathing. That was the question.

"She couldn't," Sarah looked away.

"I wouldn't have told," I swore. "I've done nothing but be on your team. It does not make sense."

"No, Delphine," Sarah stopped me again. "She couldn't. She couldn't do it if she told you. She couldn't leave you. Would you have let her?"

"Non!" I shook my head. "Never."

"She couldn't tell you. Not that she didn't want to," she trailed off. "She couldn't. Cos had her reasons."

"None of which make sense," I reminded her, lighting yet another cigarette. They calmed me for seconds.

"To end it all, Delphine," she explained. "To be done with it, to be normal. For Kira, for my daughter. For Alison's children. For me and Alison and Beth and Katja, and Helena. For you. She did it for you, too."

"I just needed a few more days," I shook my head, refusing to believe it.

"I know," she nodded.

"What if she's dead?" I looked her square in the eyes, despite the ache and tear it placed on my rib cage. I felt as if someone was tearing me in half at every moment, but to see Cosima's eyes looking at me made a foot appear on my chest, placing its full weight there.

"You can't believe that," Sarah shook her head. "She's Cosima."

"Oui, c'est vrai," I nodded. "What do I do now?"

"Go home," Sarah stated. "Go home, Delphine." I laughed and looked at the fish bowl. I looked at the bed. I looked at the ceiling so I wouldn't cry. I looked at the kitchen. I looked at the clone wall. I looked at the picture wall.

"There is no more home," I looked at my hands and stared into the globe.

"Go home," she said again. "You here is a liability for us all. You do not need to be dragged into this all."

"What if she comes back?" I asked innocently, realizing how weak it sounded.

"You'll be the first to know," she promised. "Now I need your help, can you do that?" I looked at the globe and I looked at the wall before I nodded.

I spent the next hour going through notes and the folder of papers Leeki once gave me which probably intrigued Cosima beyond restraint. To have the very process to your own creation in front of you, like a carrot on a stick, was too much. To be afraid, too. That was too much of itself. But I answered Sarah's questions as best I could. I scanned and emailed her pages. She repeated what I said and put papers in order. I helped as much as I could, answering and explaining.

"Okay, I think I've got it," Sarah sighed eventually. "Thank you," she sat back in her chair. "I mean it."

"No problem," I nodded, doing the same. "Can I just, tell you one more thing, Sarah?" I searched my pack for the last cigarette. She nodded. "Don't trust Leeki. And if you're doing what I think you're doing, you need the big fish." I threw the lighter on the table and took a grab. "They will not go down easy."

"That's Cosima's job," she nodded. "Cure us and get the inside track."

"No pressure," I blew into the air and let my head lull back against the chair. "Do you really not know if she's alright?"

"We haven't heard from her since Leeki picked her up," Sarah sighed. "She's working with them. She's smart. She'll hold her own."

"She did go away expecting to never come back though?" I asked sadly. Sarah just nodded. I nodded with her. "Merde," I sighed.

_You've looked at me like I was as unique as a star, as singular as an atom, as imperfect and myself as anyone could ever be, but the truth is, I'm not- I am a collection of parallel universes. _I read it again the entire way through and put the paper back on the desk table. _I am just one strand, and you are part of my strand, and what a wondrous strand it has been._

I turned to the clone wall. Again I stared at it as if I could figure it out by simply staring.

"You okay?" Sarah ventured. I nodded.

"I should go," I offered her an escape. "Send my love to the rest."

"Of course," she agreed. "If you ever, you know... need-"

"Au revoir, Sarah," I cut her off and ended the line of sympathy. I closed the laptop a second later.

I picked up the snow globe and carried it with me, holding it against my cheek as I stared at the wall. I paced to the other side of the room and looked at the pictures again. I shook, I returned to the other. My thoughts swirled between the two worlds. What did it even mean to be in love with a clone? Did that make sense at all? Was she really gone?

_Please, go on_. She begged that of me. _Forget it all. Please, for me. Go home and pretend this never happened. _But I couldn't do that. I couldn't. That was like asking me not to breathe. That was like asking me not to be. _For me, be safe. For me, be great. For me, please._ She was afraid of what was to come. More for me than for herself. _Please forget._ But she couldn't forget. She took a picture. I stared at the other wall now.

Our strand, our story took us to her parents. It took us to her sheets. It took us to dinner and movies and to make plans. I looked at the picture she took of me wrapped in sheets and smiling in the morning. She made me look beautiful. That was how she saw me. I traced the one of her hand shoved in front of her face, peeking only between the fingers. You could see her smile though. I traced the one of her smiling so much her eyes were closed and the flash made everything behind her disappear. And she was beautiful, and that was how I saw her. There was nothing else. She was a sun. She was unique.

And each of the clones were somebody's sun. I looked at the snow globe. They were snowflakes. Identical until you looked for something. I looked at the missing picture. _Go home_. She said it as if she thought it was possible. She was my home.

I slammed the globe on the counter again and started to spread out the genomes.

"324b21," I whispered, laying her out. "Pick up, pick up, pick up." I chanted into the phone.

"It took you longer than I expected," the voice greeted me cockily.

"They're variations," I nearly shouted. "They are not the same," I insisted.

"What?"

"324b21," I explained. "324a21 exhibited the same symptoms. 372a18 exhibited mental problems and psychosis," I explained, spreading the rest of them out. "You were testing subtle differences in their composition. They are variated from each other in minute ways."

"Delphine, you are not allowed access to the files anymore," he warned.

"I can fix it," I promised. "This strain, she is weak against certain illnesses, and just exposure to one... I have an immune booster, that's all. That's all it needs."

"Delphine," he warned. "There's no need."

"It's simple," I explained again.

"She's dead, Delphine," he informed me. "An adverse reaction to one of our procedures."

The phone fell in a clank on the floor. I heard him call my name. I heard him hang up a second later. I simultaneously felt every nerve ending in my body yet could not understand what they meant when they fired.

"Non," I shook my head.

_I love you, more than I think anyone should ever be allowed to love anyone. It does not make sense. It does not even seem real, but it is mine and it is yours. And I love you beyond doubt. _I sat there reading it. _Maybe that is why this is so hard. To love someone so greatly can never last. You can't love someone this severely and violently and wholly. Not the way I love you. To love someone like that comes in just a blink. _The sun rose and set outside and I didn't move still.

I sat there for hours. The phone rang. I stopped moving. I stopped breathing.

"She's dead," I whispered. The words felt disgusting on my tongue.

"She's not," Sarah promised. "She sent Alison a lot of files yesterday."

"He just said," I shook my head. "Don't do this."

"It's time," Sarah explained. "Get out of town."

"Okay," I hung up.

I swallowed and dressed. I gathered what I needed. I was methodical. I tucked the letter in my pocket. I tucked the picture of her as my sun in my pocket as well. I fed the fish and locked the door. Sarah meant for me to go to my house in Paris. I was going home.

It took eight hours and twenty-seven minutes to get to the institute. My cheeks were dried and my stomach ached. My phone died about halfway there. I wanted to call my mother for some reason, to tell her that I was sad. To tell her that I loved her. But I just stared at the diminishing battery until it was gone.

"I'm here to see Dr. Leeki," I spoke to the girl at the front desk.

"He's not taking appointments," she clicked on her computer. I turned and surveyed the lobby. I'd been there hundreds of times. The television hanging in a corner quietly blared in subtitles about a breaking development. I smiled and saw Sarah's picture. I saw Alison. I saw the German. I saw all of them linked. All of the faces in the folders sat there on the screen with the anchor promising more details and experts and facts to come.

I walked to the side and entered, following familiar hallways despite her insistence that I wait. I felt her picture in my pocket. I turned down hallways. Everyone was busy. Everyone was trying to get rid of files. Everyone was reeling from the news. But none of them knew what they were working on. They had files marked with ID numbers and hypothetical synthetic strains. The did not know that There numbers were of someone I loved.

"Where is Dr. Leeki?" I asked someone as they pushed past me.

"Who the hell knows," he sighed, shoving folders into a shredder.

"Delphine," a familiar voice made me turn amidst the chaos. "Nice to finally meet you."

"I wish I could say the same."

"Come with me," the clone nudged her head, turning on her heels. I followed slowly. "It is my understanding that you think you can fix the immune system, correct?"

"I'm not sure, my data is outdated, and probably inaccurate," I was being careful. This was the one inside of it all.

"That's good," she nodded, coughing slightly. "That's really good."

"I came to see for myself. Not to do anything else," I explained as we turned down another hallway and entered an elevator. "I couldn't... I'd spend my entire life wondering." I felt the gun in my back. I came for revenge. But she didn't need to know that. "Where is Leeki?"

She leaned forward and pressed a button.

"I guess the cat is out of the bag," she stood back as we lifted. "Soon they will all be found, I guess. All of the data, all of the facts and techniques, everything will be explained and hunted and God only knows what will happen next. You have five minutes," she said as the doors opened.

"Until?" I asked, unmoving.

"Until I have you arrested for trespassing," she explained.

"What are you going to do?"

"I guess we'll find out," she shrugged. "I'm sure we'll see each other soon." I took a step forward and the doors closed.

The hallway was in my old department. It was busy as well. People were bustling about to and fro. I followed the hallway as far as I could to his office. An entire day had passed where I thought she'd been dead and he told me that she was. On his desk sat a picture of us as the Golden Gate Bridge. I held her cheek and kissed her against the cold. Her arm stretched out to take the picture. I picked it up, frayed and bent as it was. One corner was dog-eared. Another was slightly torn.

"What are you doing here?" Leeki joined me in a hurry.

"I came to see for myself," I said, not turning, but looking at the picture still, framing it in my hands. I wanted to be home one last time.

"Delphine," he warned, "You shouldn't be here."

I turned to find him sorting papers, and shoving flash drives into his briefcase. I pulled out the gun I'd had since Helena. I'd thought she would get Cosima. I thought she would get me. I could have protected Cosima from the beginning if I'd just stayed away.

"Sit," I got his attention. He paused, then continued.

"I don't have time for this," he shook his head.

"SIT!"I screamed. I cocked it.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, still packing. I shot him in the leg. He wailed and slunk to the floor. It felt good. I waited for him to stop. He grabbed his leg and applied pressure. "What the fuck?" he screeched.

"You took this, from me," I held up the picture. "Because you think you own a person."

"I didn't do anything," he gritted his teeth. "She came here."

"Because you gave them no other choice!" I yelled. "And now look. You got outsmarted by a bunch of clones."

"She's here," he insisted. "I lied."

"I figured," I decided. "Where? What did you do to her?"

"We did what we had to do," he sighed.

"Where is she!?" I asked again, yelling. I pointed at him again. He smiled.

"The rats escaped their cages, but we kept one," he looked at me again. I do not remember pulling the trigger, but I remember the relief it left in my bones to see him flop over. Quickly, after realizing what I'd done, I grabbed his briefcase and moved into the hall towards the lab.

It had calmed slightly in the halls. Most had jumped ship if they could. I went to the exam room. Familiar music played inside. Quickly, I opened the door.

I almost didn't recognize her. The monitors beeped. She was hooked up to everything imaginable. Her head was shaved and a bandage wrapped around part of it. She had the same around her chest.

"Mon Dieu," I dropped the gun and briefcase at the door. She startled a bit and opened her eyes. A droopy smile crossed her lips.

"Ah, I got heaven," she mumbled. I approached her bedside. "Score."

"What did they do to you?" I asked, I couldn't touch her. She was hooked up to a drug drip. She was unrecognizable and frail and the life was not in her eyes. My hands were to afraid to make her real. My hands were too afraid to break her further.

"Can we go home now?" she asked, furrowing her brow though not opening her eyes. "I did my part. Did they do theirs?"

"I figured it out," I promised her. "I think I can make you better. I came to see you. I thought you were dead, but I wouldn't believe it."

"Okay," she nodded. "But them...?" she shook her head and swallowed roughly.

"Everyone knows," I promised. I grazed a knuckle upon her cheek. She was cold, but I held there. My heart, it ached. "You did well."

"You did well," she smiled, eyes still shut. "You didn't listen."

"No," I shook my head. I kissed her lips.

"I told you to forget," she scolded, coughing a bit.

"We can be angry at each other later," I promised. She chuckled a bit.

"Alright," she assented. "Since you're stuck with me, now, I guess."

"Mon Dieu," I sighed. "I hope so."


	8. She Lit a Fire

**So, this will be over in a few chapters, maybe. Who knows. I might do an AU next.  
I would like to do a collection of one-shots for parts of this. So I am looking for requests or prompts or whatever.  
Message me here or on tumblr. I have a few ideas, but don't wanna miss any. **

* * *

_I have been trying to find her  
Want to give what I got  
She lit a fire  
But now she's in my every thought._

"You do not need the hat," she whispered. I pulled it snugger over my head and smiled at her. She pulled it off and ran her hands over the sprouts of hair that grew now. She kissed my crown and held me tightly about the ears. "You are beautiful, ma petite," she whispered to my scalp. I wrapped my arms around her and dug my nose into her sternum. I felt her cheek atop my head. She held me tighter. "It is just hair," she reminded me. "You are more than that. You are skin and bone and mine."

"And that thing," I felt her fingers along the crescent shaped scar behind my temple. The skin was still pink and healing but nearly scarred.

"We are all covered in those," she promised. She gave herself one more moment before pulling the beanie over my ears once again and straightening it.

I thought about what she did to get me here. She murmured in her sleep. She told me quite blatantly what she did. I would never forgive myself for not seeing that coming, for allowing her to do such things which were so far from her character they worried me as to what effect they would have on her soul. When I was well enough to go home, she even yelled at me. She actually yelled at me a lot. And now we were stuck in the backlash of it all. We'd slapped each other, we'd affronted and hurt and wounded the other, and it showed in us still. That part worried me.

"Are you ready?" She asked.

"As I'll ever be," I shrugged.

I looked at the empty wall that used to be genetic materials and pictures and notes of constructed genomes. Delphine fed the fish before leaning on the counter. I stood behind the empty desk, cleaned after we'd spent a day scanning documents onto the computer and handing over the rest to the attorneys. A snow globe sat on the edge. I still caught Delphine holding it from time to time, looking at it with a confused and worried stare. The picture of us at the bridge, torn and folded and bent as it was, was back in its spot on the wall. And all felt partially right with the world.

I'd held it for two days, before I was drugged. The picture. I worked with Leeki in sequencing parts of my body and studying the reaction of blood samples to viral cocktails. But I kept the picture in my pocket and stared at it from time to time. I worked hard to find what Sarah and Alison needed. I worked hard to get Art what he wanted. I worked hard to survive so that I could tell her I tried if she found me, or I could go back to her healed so she wouldn't have to worry. And I looked at that picture to make it easier. I dreamed of that moment when I couldn't see it anymore.

I remembered glimpses of the next week and a half, but it was a lopsided and angular blur that did not make sense to me. I didn't remember much until about a week after that when I woke up in the hospital and Alison and Sarah were staring at me and smiling. And Sarah shouted so loudly for Delphine that it made my ears ring. And I saw the picture beside the bed. But she came running in a second later with a glass of water and pan of ice and she placed them down so quickly and was beside me even quicker that I couldn't remember if she said anything. But I remembered her eyes in front of me, staring at me like I was unreal or not myself. Slowly I felt her hands on my cheeks and the smile that grew on hers. "_Mon coeur," she whispered. "Don't you ever," she started to scold. _But she kissed me instead. And she held my face and she cried and smiled at the same time when all I could do was pay attention to it all.

That was two weeks ago, and I'd been cleared to go home, healed from the tests they'd done, relatively bored and bothered by being stuck in a hospital watching nothing but the news drone on about my existence. The best was the people who thought I was an abomination. The worst were those who had an opinion at all. My professors told me not to worry about classes in short emails slightly amazed at my existence while trying not to propose studies. I could feel the restraint present in every period and comma. So I went home to my apartment, returned the emails promising to return next semester, waited and talked to lawyers. And that was when Delphine yelled at me. And we fought quite heartily. We fought for each other despite ourselves. We fought for the other as if we were leaving. I understood her hurt and worry and anger and bitterness. She didn't understand my reasons or rationale or apologies or self hatred. But when she tired herself from yelling and I tired myself from still hurting, she handed me water and pills and kissed my cheeks and squeezed me tight and I laid her down and wrote apologies into her skin and promises into her bones and oaths against her fingertips. But it didn't feel like enough. Nothing felt like enough. I'd gone away. You can't come back from that. You just can't. That was the part that still terrified me. I'd resigned myself to my fate, but it had been changed and irrevocably tied to hers. I wasn't sure if she wanted that.

"We will have a holiday, soon," she promised. I nodded and walked towards her again, stifling the thoughts that screamed between my ears. She was beautiful and worried. She killed someone.

"Not soon enough," I muttered. "I need you to know that I'm not going anywhere. It's you and me."

"Je sais," she gave me a fake smile. "Je sais," she repeated.

"Do you think we'll make it?" I asked, sighing tracing her jaw. That plagued my mind often.

"I think we have," she shrugged. It was something.

"I will never hurt you again," I promised. "I just want thing to be like they were before."

"They can't be," she straightened my shirt and held my neck. "We are free now. Things will be better."

"You came for me," I remembered. She nodded.

"Of course," she nodded, her forehead on my forehead. "I'll always come for you. You would always come for me." I nodded eagerly. "We must go now," she reminded me.

"Yes, okay," I nodded. I held her cheeks and I kissed her. I held her tight and I kissed her harder. She kissed me back. She kissed me eagerly, for the first time in weeks. She cured me and she saved me and she kissed me like she wanted me for the first time in a long time and I wrapped my arm around her and tried to tell her everything.

"We should go," she said again. "Or we won't be leaving." I was nervous, with the hat. I felt hideous with the scars. But she looked at me through half-lidded eyes and she made me ache and feel like a fragmented whole.

"I'm okay with that," I kissed her again before she pulled away.

"I love you," she explained to my nose. "You broke my heart, and I love you still. Don't do it again just because you can." I swallowed heavily. Her nose was on my nose and her eyes were shut tightly and her shoulders swelled and ebbed under taking a breath. That's the trick of it all, isn't it?

"You know why I did," I explained. My mouth was dry. "That doesn't matter though," I realized. "You and me. Our team. No other team."

"I shouldn't be allowed to love someone so much," she chuckled a bit, exasperated in a way. Her fingers inched under my hat.

"I know," I agreed.

It took us two hours and eighteen minutes to arrive and for Alison to pick us up. two hours after that we were sitting in a courtroom surrounded by photographers and people. Delphine held my hand while they projected the scans and pictures from the surgeries I did not consent to. I held hers when they spoke about her self-defense. The entire trial was a mock one against a dead man and a corporation. But we sat there, on display. Hours of testimony explaining what we were. The promise of more days to come. So we could be legislated. To see the dead mirror images of myself on the screen, to see what had happened, to realize it was done. It was overwhelming. I adjusted my hat and kissed Delphine's palm between questions. The best we would have is a civil suit against the company. The worst would be a law barring our existence. Anything in between seemed fair.

"We're not going back," I decided in the car as we headed for the hotel.

"We have to," Alison interjected, looking out the window solemnly. "We have to finish this thing."

"No," I shook my head. Delphine wound her fingers through mine. "I'm done."

"You're allowed," Sarah promised. "She's allowed." She stood up for me. Delphine held me tighter and nodded.

"Auntie Cos," Kira whispered, coming close to me. "Will you still visit even though you're not clones anymore?" I paused and looked at Sarah, then Alison, then Delphine. No one offered me help. "Auntie Alison lives close," she explained in the silence. "But you live far. Where do you live?" she looked at Delphine.

"I live farther," she chuckled.

"We'll always be clones," I explained. "Always. I will visit plenty. You're like my favorite person under three feet tall on the planet."

And suddenly in that moment it seemed finished. There was nothing linking us anymore. Delphine specified the strains we'd need to boost our systems. We had little in common. We were not related. I met Sarah's eyes before she dropped them and hugged Kira to her side, smiling for her daughter. Alison met mine next, wide and concerned.

"We really are done," she sighed, looking out the window again. "We can still... We're still... I mean..."

"Stop pretending you're not all family," Delphine interrupted. "Nothing will change. You Americans with your repression and suppression. It is asinine."

"I liked her better when she was yelling at me in french," Sarah laughed.

"She's right though," Alison propped herself up and stiffened her spine. "We have separate lives, but I think we're inescapably linked."

"Yeah, right," Sarah agreed begrudgingly. "I guess we're okay with that."

"Agreed," I offered. "And the others?"

"Oh fuck," Sarah pshawed. "I can't handle you lot as it is. I don't need any more of'em. They didn't even do anything."

"They'll have questions," Alison observed.

"I quit," I shook my head when they looked at me. Delphine kissed my hat-covered temple.

"We don't know-" Alison started.

"She quit," Delphine spoke for me. "She can be in the Clone Club sometimes, but all of the time, she is mine." Alison looked at her for a moment and nodded. "She's done enough." It was quiet, then, and we were all coming to terms with the finality of it all.

There were people waiting at the hotel. Sarah pushed through with Alison holding Kira following.

"Hey," I held Delphine back for a moment. "I know, okay," I promised. I held her cheek. "I know I'm yours."

"You're mine," was all she repeated. I nodded. I took off my hat. She kissed my head again, tucking her fingers behind my ears. I felt her nose grace my scalp. "Ah, que c'est beau," she whispered.

I followed her from the car with photographers snapping pictures of me now. I wasn't hiding anymore what happened to me. I wasn't hiding from her. Delphine held my hand and pulled me through the questions they threw at me, at us.

"Almost there," she pulled me into the elevator. We made our way up to the room. It was quiet as the doors closed. In our room the television was still on from earlier. The news showed us sitting in the bleachers. It showed clones in other countries. It showed the dead ones too. It showed me. It showed the pictures of my surgeries. Delphine turned it off. "Are you done?" she asked quietly, throwing the remote onto the desk. I stood, out of place, next to the wall by the bathroom, afraid to enter.

"I'm done," I repeated. I threw the hat on the bed.

"What's next for us?" Neither of us moved. Neither of us looked away either.

"You and me," I shrugged. "I want to graduate. I want you to be there every night, before every test, for dinner, for lunch, for breakfast. That's what's next for us. Breakfast." There was a tiny smile on her lips. She crossed her arms and jutted her hip.

"We can do breakfast," she nodded.

"What's next for us?" I asked her now.

"I want you to graduate," she explained. "I want to research. I want to go to sleep and wake up with you every day."

"You and me," I repeated. "I'm done."

"You're done," she repeated. Her smile grew. I hugged her tightly because I'd someone gotten within jumping distance. I grabbed her and I kissed her. I held her close and I loved her as much as I could. "I don't want to have to think about what they did to you," she whispered, her hands on the back of my head, her nose along my temple.

"Don't," I begged. I didn't want that either. "Let's have dinner and lay in bed."

"Yeah," she agreed and smiled.

Delphine ordered room service and I washed my face before changing to something more comfortable. She flopped into the giant bed beside me until we were both divots in the middle.

"We need a bed like this," I mumbled as we sat shoulder to shoulder, heads bent towards each other and touching gently.

"We have one," she returned.

"I never want to leave here," I sighed.

"You don't want to live in a hotel," she shook her head. Her hands wound in mine.

"Fresh sheets and towels every day," I listed. "Big bed. Premium cable."

"Boring," she insisted.

There was a knock at the door before I could remind her of the mini bar and ascetically neutral wall paintings. She told me not to get up, but was at the door and peering through the peephole before I could register her movements.

"You have a visitor," she opened the door a second later with tiny feet pounding on the tiny floor and hopping in to the bed.

"Auntie Cos," Kira hopped in. "We're having pizza, want some?"

"We've ordered dinner, love," I assured her, sighing as she nudged my stomach. It hurt but I smiled as Sarah followed with Delphine.

"Do you want to watch a movie after? Mom is going to order one," she insisted, rubbing my head. That was a favorite thing to do of hers when she visited me in the hospital and even now.

"I think I'm kind of tired," I informed her.

"Delphine said you would," she insisted. I looked at my girlfriend who shrugged awkwardly.

"But she's French, little one," I looked at her. "They can't be taken seriously."

"Delphine," the little girl looked at her sternly. "You fibbed." I got a look for that. I gave her one too.

I ended up watching the movie. I yawned the entire way through it. And when I went back to my room, Delphine was already asleep with a magazine across her lap. I washed my face and stared at the face that presented itself there. I rubbed my hand over my head and stared into my eyes, unbelieving that it was all over, confused as to what I should do now. They don't tell you about that part, the what comes after. I was free, but I was afraid of that. I rinsed with water again, holding it there, holding my breath.

I turned off the lights as I slipped into bed.

"Bonsoir, amour," Deliphine whispered as her arms snuggly secured themselves about me. "I am so tired."

"It's the bed," I assured her. I felt her forehead in my cheek and her fingers tangling with my ribs. "Let's go to your bed."

"You are my bed," she mumbled, digging her nose into my neck. Her hair tickled my face.

"I want to meet Hugo," I explained.

"We shouldn't leave," she sighed. "You'll have to go tomorrow."

"I don't want to," I reminded her.

"You'll have to," again. "We'll go once everything is done."

"I'm done," I wanted to scream.

"Okay, okay," she agreed. "We'll go see Hugo tomorrow."

"Okay," I agreed. "Do you miss it?" I traced her neck.

"Yes," She sighed. "But not as much as I missed you."

"I'm going to be good for you," I decided. I closed my eyes.

"I know," she whispered. She was asleep before the words really meant anything in her brain.

I slept and awoke to a girl atop me, kissing my neck and claiming me entirely. I hummed and let my back arch and my mouth be taken. I heard thunder against the windows, rattling and shaking them with applause for us. The world conspired for that moment, to let me be hers.

"I love you," she whispered into the pillow beside my ear while her hips moved and her fingers slipped.

"Mmmm," was all I could manage. I wanted to say more, but that was impossible. Her fingers were on the sides of my hips pulling away my clothes, and her tongue rendered me further incapable of having coherent thoughts.

The sun rose and the rain calmed to the steady plop of large drops and I tried to catch my breath with it all, but I didn't want to, not really.

"I love you," I panted.

"Because I do the tongue thing," she smirked.

"Among other reasons," I wrapped my arms around her.

"We can go again, today," she reminded me.

"We're not leaving this bed," I promised.


End file.
